MANILA, Philippines — “Foreign troll factories should be blocked from polluting the 2022 elections,” Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said Thursday, even as he believed that no local candidate “will be in cahoots with alien interests” to advance such a sinister agenda.
“I don’t believe that candidates will be in cahoots with alien interests, and I know that as patriots they will not condone an intrusion even if it is meant for their benefit,” the senator said.
“But nothing prevents foreign agents who have so much at stake here from propping up their favored candidate and pulling down the ones they dislike,” he added.
The senator then called for the crafting of ways on how to “detect and repel” foreign interference in the 2022 elections, stressing poll results should be based “on the free and informed choice of our people, and not on manufactured stories designed to mislead them.”
“When unleashed in our elections, this virus is as dangerous as malware in ballot-counting machines,” he pointed out.
“This early, regardless of our political affiliation, we should work as one in making sure that no offshore black propaganda operations would mar the 2022 elections,” Recto also said.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) should start planning the installation of a “firewall” that would keep “alien-generated or alien-funded content from fomenting hatred and widening the division among our people,” according to the senator.
“They should ensure that our submarine cables will not end up as puppet strings that can sway voting choices and dictate the outcome of a political exercise that should be limited to Filipinos alone,” he added.
Recto’s statements come after social media giant Facebook closed down several fake accounts and pages traced to individuals in the Fujian province of China. The said accounts were posting contents supportive of President Rodrigo Duterte and the possible 2022 presidential bid of his daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, among others.
Facebook said the accounts and pages engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
Similarly, the social networking site took down over 100 fake domestic accounts and pages linked to the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Both the PNP and the AFP denied having any links with the said accounts.