VP Robredo to clergy: Help fight disinformation, fake news
Vice President Leni Robredo addresses her supporters during a campaign rally in Borongan City, Eastern Samar on Tuesday, March 29, 2022. (VP Leni Media Bureau)
BORONGAN CITY, Eastern Samar – Vice President Leni Robredo has urged the clergy here to help fight for the truth amid a massive disinformation campaign.
She conveyed her appeal during a breakfast meeting with Borongan Bishop Crispin Varquez and the priests of the Diocese of Borongan at the bishop’s residence in Borongan on March 30.
The clergy assured Robredo that they would take on her challenge to combat disinformation and unanimously expressed support for her candidacy.
Being a Marian devotee, Bishop Varquez gifted Robredo a statue of the Nativity of Our Lady, patroness of Borongan.
Robredo held a series of rallies in Eastern Visayas on March 28 to 29, the bailiwick of former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
Marcos’ mother, former first lady Imelda R. Marcos, is from Leyte.
Of the six provinces in Eastern Visayas, only two governors expressed support to Robredo – Governor Edwin Ongchuan of Northern Samar and Ben Evardone of Eastern Samar.
Robredo arrived in Samar on March 28 where she visited the cities of Calbayog and Catbalogan. In the evening, she visted the capital town of Catarman in Northern Samar for a grand rally.
Despite a downpour, her supporters patiently waited at the University of Eastern Philippines grandstand in Catarman.
Provincial Information Officer John Allen Berbon said the crowd in the rally reached around 70,000 people based on estimates by the Northern Samar Police Provincial Office.
On March 29, Robredo arrived early in Eastern Samar and went to the upstream municipality of Maslog on board a chopper.
From Maslog, she flew to Leyte where she visited Palo town before swinging to Naval town in Biliran.
She then proceeded to Ormoc City in Leyte before going back to Eastern Samar for a grand rally at Borongan’s Baybay Boulevard where about 52,000 people attended.
The next day, March 30, she visited to the bishop’s residence about 7 a.m. where she had a breakfast meeting with Vasquez and other church leaders.
More than the prayers and the usual blessing extended by Church leaders, she asked the Church to combat disinformation.
“You have the machinery to convince people, you have the machinery for truth,” Robredo told Bishop Varquez.
Robredo said she believed that lies and propaganda were no match against the machinery of the Church.
She lamented how disinformation could change the whole landscape.
“The worst thing that can happen is not me losing but the other candidate winning through disinformation,” Robredo said. (Reports from Cyrain Cabuenas, Joey Gabieta and Rachel Arnaiz, Inquirer Visayas)
