Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo is not amused by the antics of an anti-government Facebook page.
In a statement today, he blasted a meme that the page posted which shows him presenting a list of candidates from the opposition camp, the Liberal Party (LP), as well as a few independent candidates critical of the government.
The meme appeared last night on the anti-government parody account Malacañang Events and Catering Services, a page famous for poking fun at President Rodrigo Duterte and his supporters.
Here’s the meme that led Panelo to blow his top.
His complaint may have caused a Streisand effect, though, as the meme hasn’t even gone viral on social media. As of this article’s posting, it only had 850 likes and 607 shares on Facebook. But now everyone has reported about it.
Some commenters thought the meme was a hoot, but Panelo thought it was unfunny. He took the meme seriously and called it the opposition’s desperate attempt of winning next week’s election. He also called it an example of fake news.
“While we understand that the post is a political meme, which is the norm in this campaign season, the same however amounts to a defamatory imputation,” he said in his statement.
“It is a given fact that there are still netizens who believe in what they see or read on the internet, including images that have been obviously altered, edited or photoshopped. It is for this reason that I strongly denounce the malicious use of my image for black propaganda and political mudslinging.”
The meme was an edited photo from Panelo’s May 8 presser, where he presented another diagram which accused various personalities of allegedly planning to oust Duterte from power. This was all based on information which Duterte received from “many sources,” Panelo said. However, these sources remain unidentified.
The government seems to have a fondness for making such diagrams, because just last month, Panelo presented a matrix which accused several journalists of allegedly conspiring to remove Duterte.
Various camps have called these matrices ridiculous, with some saying that the second one is a trial by publicity. One journalist whom the government accused of discrediting Duterte, VERA Files founder Ellen Tordesillas, called the accusation a complete lie.
Panelo might also be forgetting that pro-government Facebook pages are also guilty of creating misleading memes and posts. One of the more famous ones, for example, is a doctored photo of former presidential candidate Mar Roxas that shows him drinking from a plate. However, the original photo, as it appeared on the government’s Official Gazette, shows him drinking from a faucet by capturing the water with his hands.
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