Controversial Fil-Am civic leader Loida Nicolas Lewis allegedly said that she is sorry for being mistaken about President Rodrigo Duterte. At least this is what a few blogs claimed.
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However, we have plenty of reasons to suspect the veracity of the story seeing as how it came from the fake news site Aljazeera-channel.com.
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The website claimed that Lewis has already expressed her “confidence” in Duterte as the Philippine president. She was even quoted by the site saying, “Am pretty sorry for being wrong about Duterte.”
Lewis reportedly made these apologetic remarks after Duterte was voted “the best global executive and most influential individual around the globe.”
We’d like to point out the things that clued us in onto the fakeness of the story. First, the website did not provide further information about which awarding body has given the President the said honor.
We could assume that it was referring to the Time magazine award, but Duterte’s drug war was criticized in the Time 100 writeup even when he ranked first in the magazine’s poll. It was written by former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria, who said: “His ironfisted strategy alarms governments, human-rights organizations and faith-based groups while winning high approval ratings at home.”
“Duterte could start by treating drugs as a health, human rights and development issue. He could prosecute the most violent criminals and provide treatment for users rather than condemn them to prison, or worse,” he added.
“There will always be drugs in the Philippines, whether the President likes it or not. The tragedy is that many more people are likely going to die as he learns this lesson,” Gaviria further said.
Second, we Googled the website’s direct quote of Lewis’ statement, but we could only find it in blogs that copied the story from Aljazeera-channel.com.
This is not the first time we’ve busted a story from Aljazeera-channel.com. We’ve already debunked some of this site’s hoaxes, such as Lewis being involved in drugs according to US intel, De lima claiming Filipinos are “depressed” and “worried” about her, Australian foreign minister telling human rights groups not to fight Duterte and his drug war, among others.
Source: ( gmanetwork.com )
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