At a glance:

• Claim: Former president Ferdinand Marcos will replace the Aquinos on the P500-bill.
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has not announced a redesign of the P500 bill as of December 8.
• Why we fact checked this: A reader sent the claim to the Facebook group “Fact-checking in the Philippines” for verification. The video containing the claim also had over 164,000 views as of writing.

Complete details:

Facebook page “Maharlikan atin toh” posted a video on September 23 that wrongly claimed that former president Ferdinand Marcos will replace former senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr and former president Corazon Aquino on the P500 bills.

This claim is false. There is no announcement from the BSP about a redesign of the P500 bill. The last time the central bank launched a massive redesign for current banknotes was in 2010 to further enhance security features and improve the durability of the fiat money.

These designs, called the New Generation Currency Banknote Series, are still being used as of December 2020. The Aquinos are still on the P500 paper bills.

It is not clear where the blue P500 bill with Marcos’ face included in the video came from, but it is not available anywhere on the BSP website. A reverse image search showed that some pro-administration Facebook pages have shared the blue bill online since 2019, but the captions of these posts did not say that it is the new official design – only that they wish that’s how the P500 bill looks like instead of the yellow bill currently available.

The page “Maharlikan atin toh” uploaded the video in September, but people are still sharing and commenting on it as of December 2020. As of writing, the video had over 164,000 views, 21,500 reactions, 4,900 comments, and 4,200 shares. A reader sent the video to the Facebook group Fact-checking in the Philippines for verification.

In 2012, the BSP confirmed that they once designed a P500-bill featuring Marcos in the 1980s but the banknotes did not reach the circulation stage.

In November, Rappler also debunked a different video uploaded by “Maharlikan atin toh,” which falsely claimed that the Philippines, during the Marcos dictatorship, developed a missile system before China did. – 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.