The Supreme Court allegedly ruled in favor of former Senator Bongbong Marcos in the electoral protest he filed against Vice President Leni Robredo, according to some online reports.
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The story was carried by blogs du30newsportal.info, dutertenewsinfo.org, and dutertedaily.info, with the first website’s story being shared over 6,000 times, as of writing.
Its headline says, “Panalo na si Marcos! Supreme Court pinaburan si Marcos sa kanyang election protest panoorin.” It was shared on Facebook on September 5.
The article was picked up by Facebook fan pages dedicated to Duterte supporters, such as “Pres. Duterte ang Agila ng Davao” and “Du30 Solid Supporters,” among others.
One page rejoiced over the good news.
The other thought of Marcos’ supposed win as an advanced Christmas gift and even urged Ilocanos to prepare a feast for the former senator.
We checked out the most shared story from du30newsportal.info, but it only contained an 11-minute YouTube video that is a mix of various clips combined showing reports about the progress of Marcos’ electoral protest, Robredo’s lawyer talking about their legal move regarding the protest, and part of one of the Vice Presidential debates during the 2016 campaign.
What wasn’t shown though was how Marcos won the electoral protest against Robredo.
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What we recently heard though was that the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) junks Marcos’ “First Cause of Action” questioning the credibility of the 2016 Automated Election System (AES). The Supreme Court, sitting as PET, ruled Marcos’ statement questioning the authenticity of the certificates of canvass generated by the Consolidation and Canvass System as “meaningless” and “pointless.”
But even when Marcos’ camp would have successfully proven the first cause of action in his protest, that does not guarantee his victory, as per the resolution.
“Stated otherwise, even if protestant (Marcos) succeeds in proving his first cause of action, this will not mean he has already won the position of Vice President as this can only be determined by a manual recount of all votes in all precincts,” the resolution read.
The same resolution also junked Robredo’s motion to dismiss the electoral protest filed against her.
The PET resolution issued on August 29 showed that the electoral protest Marcos filed against Robredo and Robredo’s counter-protest are still ongoing, so the SC, as PET, could not possibly have ruled in favor of Marcos. This meant the headline of these online reports declaring Marcos as the winner in his poll protest is misleading and is meant to start spreading fake news.
Could it be just the bloggers’ ardent wish for Marcos to win? Still, it is not right to publish and spread fake news in order to fool people, some of who have rejoiced over the fake story.
It only served to confuse people more, as many of them also read and heard about the PET’s decision to junk Marcos’ first cause of action.
It’s a good thing some of the commenters on the Duterte fan page that posted the fake story on Facebook called out the page’s admin for posting fake news.
This is not the first fake story that “Pres. Duterte ang Agila ng Davao” shared. The Facebook page also shared the fake news about Senator Trillanes getting suspended for six months, Senator Bam Aquino being the mastermind behind the Marawi siege, Robredo being stripped of her license to practice law, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulating the Philippines for arresting Senator Leila de Lima, and more. In July, it shared the misleading story about senators filing an ethics complaint against Trillanes when it was not true. It was only on September 4 that Senator Richard Gordon filed an ethics complaint against Trillanes.
Sources: ( cnnphilippines.com , news.abs-cbn.com )
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