A video on YouTube and Facebook (FB) is claiming that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio have appointed former president Rodrigo Duterte as House speaker. This is not true and not possible.
Marcos and Duterte-Carpio have no power to make such an appointment. Also, only a duly elected member of the House of Representatives can become speaker. The former president is not a member of Congress.
Both the Senate president and the House speaker are elected by a majority vote of all the members of their respective Houses.
First uploaded on Jan. 5, the video bore the headline:
“KAKAPASOK LANG NAGKAGUL0 na Mga Media KONGRESO TAMBA PAPALITAN ni DUTERTE Ut0s ni PBBM VPSARA (Just in. The media was in chaos. Congress Tamba will be replaced by Duterte. Order of PBBM VP Sara).”
The video also showed in its thumbnail a photo of Marcos, Duterte and Speaker Martin Romualdez, along with a text that read: “IPALIT SI DU30 BAGONG SPEAKER NG KONGRESO. TANGGAL SI TAMBA. (Replace with Duterte. New speaker of Congress. Tamba was removed).”
“Tamba” refers to Romualdez, the president’s cousin and incumbent speaker. He remains in his position, and currently there are no resolutions passed or initiated seeking his ouster.
The video is no more than clickbait that showed an anonymous narrator saying that Duterte could run for senator or congressman in the upcoming 2025 midterm elections, while the rest of it played a clip of a previously fact-checked vlogger praising the Duterte administration’s projects.
The erroneous video emerged a day after Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa said in an online interview that Duterte might run for senator if the International Criminal Court continues its investigation into the extrajudicial killings linked to the Duterte administration’s bloody drug war.
Dela Rosa added that his fellow PDP-Laban members are discussing Duterte’s possible 2025 bid, although the former president remains undecided.
Duterte, then an incumbent president, previously ran for senator in the 2022 national polls but later withdrew his candidacy.
Uploaded by YouTube channels PINAS NEWS INSIDER and XCREW, and FB pages Philippines Update News and Mindset PH, the video has garnered a total of 98,197 interactions.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
