At a glance

• Claim: Former foreign secretary Albert del Rosario and Vice President Leni Robredo backed out of a debate on the West Philippine Sea with Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque.
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: Neither Del Rosario nor Robredo could have backed out of the supposed debate since both of them did not accept the challenge in the first place.
• Why we fact-checked this: Rappler spotted the video containing this claim on social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle. It was uploaded by a YouTube channel that has a history of posting videos with inaccurate information.

Complete details

YouTube channel “Showbiz Fanaticz” uploaded a video on May 12 that falsely claimed former foreign secretary Albert del Rosario and Vice President Leni Robredo backed out of a debate with Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque on the West Philippine Sea.

The channel titled its video, “JUST IN: ROBERO (sic) at DEL ROSARIO NA DUWAG sa HAMONG DEBATE ni ROQUE| VP LENI & ALBERT NAG BACK OUT NA (Robredo and Del Rosario chickened out of the debate challenged by Roque. VP Leni and Albert backed out)!”

This is false.

Neither Del Rosario nor Robredo could have backed out of the supposed debate since both of them did not accept the challenge in the first place.

The false video cited a Facebook post from the official page of Manila Bulletin as its source, but the post only said that Del Rosario declined Roque’s invitation to join the debate on the West Philippine Sea. (READ: Roque tussles with Carpio on debate topic, wants to take on Robredo too)

On May 10, Roque egged on Del Rosario and Robredo to join retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio’s team in the proposed debate. Del Rosario declined a day later and said that it will “manifest to the world that we are not united and we do not know what we are doing.”

Originally, President Rodrigo Duterte himself had challenged Carpio to a debate. Carpio accepted the challenge, but Duterte later backed out and asked Roque to represent him instead.

Meanwhile, Robredo’s camp shrugged off Roque’s challenge. Robredo’s spokesperson Barry Gutierrez responded to Roque’s challenge in a tweet on May 10. Gutierrez said in Filipino, “He has the nerve to challenge when they backed out from the first debate they had set. You should just follow VP Leni’s example: Just work, you have lots of time.”

Rappler spotted the false video via social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle. The video has over 3,500 views on YouTube as of writing. The channel “Showbiz Fanaticz” has repeatedly uploaded videos containing inaccurate information before. – Pauline Macaraeg/Rappler.com

Keep us aware of suspicious Facebook pages, groups, accounts, websites, articles, or photos in your network by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time.

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