“Hindi ko na siya [Badoy] pag-aaksayahan ng oras (I will not waste my time on her).”
This was the statement of Vice President Leni Robredo on Wednesday as she responded on the remark made by Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy, naming her “fake news purveyor.”
During a Senate hearing held on Tuesday, Badoy accused Robredo of being “one of the primary purveyors of fake news” for supposedly painting “a gloomy picture” of the country before an international audience about extrajudicial killings.
“Mas maraming mahalagang issues na dapat tayong [pag]tuunan. Hindi na ako mag-aaksaya ng oras sa mga hindi dapat pag-aksayahan ng oras (There are a lot of important issues to address. I won’t waste my time to the things that are not really necessary),” Robredo told reporters in a chance interview during her visit in Naga City.
The Vice President then discussed a topic regarding her current advocacy to help the residents affected by the continuing activity of Mayon volcano.
Robredo urged the public to send donations to places near Mt. Mayon, where thousands have been evacuated as the lava from the volcano continued to flow.
Prior to this statement, Atty. Barry Gutierrez, legal adviser to the Vice President, slammed Badoy for calling Robredo as one of the “purveyors of fake news.”
“If this is the Lorraine Badoy who insisted that a high school class project was an ‘LP publication,’ and, when corrected, refused to accept her mistake and tried to bully Jillian Robredo and her high school classmates, then I hardly think she is the most credible person to talk about ‘fake news’,” Gutierrez said in a statement.
He also said that with Badoy’s appointment at the PCOO, the public can see through what the officials at the Palace communication department are focusing on.
“That this person is now in PCOO, though, is a very clear indicator of the kind of work it focuses on these days,” he added.
Before her appointment at the PCOO, Badoy served as an assistant secretary at the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
The Communications Undersecretary had been controversial after she hit President Rodrigo Duterte’s critics, even telling European Union (EU), one of the staunchest critics of Duterte, to just focus on child pornography.