A Facebook post showing a photo of a signpost saying ‘No to Mar’ in Tacloban City is fake, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Thursday night.
The French news agency said the image shown in the viral post was tampered and false.
The post was referring to Manuel “Mar” Roxas, the presidential candidate who lost to President Rodrigo Duterte during the 2016 elections.
Tacloban was among the most affected areas during the onslaught of Super Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) in 2013.
When Yolanda struck the country, Roxas was the Interior Secretary under the Aquino administration.
The AFP, however, traced the fake image, saying it was manipulated from a photo taken from the travel resource website, GoAbroad.
The GoAbroad website featured the same billboard which says, “Welcome to Tacloban City.” It was published in December 2013.
AFP said both photos had similar identifying markers such as “a mountain ridge at the background, water on the street and a gray corrugated iron sheet behind the signpost.”
The fake post was from a pro-Duterte page and was shared more than 13,000 times in the first 24 hours. /ee