Old photos of rice priced at the P20-level per kilo in Davao City have resurfaced on Facebook to boost the campaign promise of President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr.
With three weeks before the May 9 elections, the former senator from Ilocos Norte, should he win, had vowed to subsidize the price of rice and bring it down to P20 to P30 per kilo in his first year in office. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1584241/bongbong-marcos-vows-to-bring-down-price-of-rice
The variation of the misleading posts, which were posted in different Facebook pages, claimed that the price of local regular-milled rice in outskirt Calinan District went down to as low as P24 per kilo.
One of the false claims read: “Presyo ng Bigas (price of rice) (in)front of GMALL CALINAN DAVAO CITY 
near overpass Thanks DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
Samasama tayong babangon muli.“
“Sama-sama tayong babangon muli” (We shall all rise together) is the campaign slogan of Marcos, Jr., who was proclaimed winner of the May 9 presidential race on Wednesday, 25 May.
A reverse search of the photos and the keywords used in the false claim yielded a post uploaded two years ago by Facebook user Malyn Ko.
Her post, uploaded on December 12, 2019, reached at least 49,000 shares and almost 3,500 reactions.
MindaNews checked rice stores in front of GMall Calinan on Wednesday, 25 May. The prices of rice range from P33 to P38 per kilo.
Crischiela Gabo, 24, a vendor at the ASG Store in Calinan Public Market, said the false photos that circulated recently were taken by a customer at their store in 2019, during harvest season when prices were expectedly low.
Following the circulation of the fake posts, rice stores in Calinan were bombarded with at least 15 inquiries per day about the false cheap price of rice.
As with all our other reports, MindaNews welcomes leads or suggestions from the public to potential fact-check stories. (Yas D. Ocampo / MindaNews)
(This fact-check piece was produced with the support of Internews’ Philippine Fact-Checker Incubator Project.)
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