ANGELES CITY, Pampanga – “The camp of Mayor Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin, Jr. denounces, in the strongest terms, the underhanded tactics employed by our political opponents in using ‘poser’ social media accounts to spread false allegations against the team and our candidates.”
Thus said Team Lazatin in a statement on April 8, 2022, following the unmasking of one such ‘poser’ social media account that has been peddling accusations against Team Lazatin for the past few days.
The said account, supposedly belonging to a certain ‘Cristal Sicat’, has been posting on social media, claiming to have received money after attending a Team Lazatin stage meeting.
Sicat ended her post with a ‘hashtag’ expressing support for Bayung Angeles, the political team of incumbent City Councilor and mayoralty candidate Amos Rivera.
Later, the real owner of the account’s identity, a woman named Ana Berry, posted an appeal on social media to have Sicat’s account reported as it is using her pictures and videos to fake their identity.
Ana Berry wrote, “Guys PAREPORT po pls. Someone’s using my face… Bacareful sa lahat this is the only account that im using and Ana Berry.” (sic)
Berry stated that she is not even from Pampanga.
In an earlier statement, Team Lazatin strongly denied the accusations of paying their stage meeting attendees.
“Mariing pinapabulaanan ng Team Lazatin ang mga malisyosong post sa social media na nagsasabing namimigay ng pera ang Team Lazatin sa mga stage meeting ng team sa mga barangay,” the statement said, “Ang mga nasabing post sa social media ay pawang kasinungalingan at paninira ng mga kalaban sa pulitika.”
Team Lazatin also called attention to the 500-peso bill being used in multiple social media posts, which are supposedly coming from different people but bearing the same serial number.
“Patunay na recycled at manufactured ang mga litrato na diumano ay ebidensya na may perang ipinamimigay sa mga stage meeting ng Team Lazatin,” Team Lazatin added.
Team Lazatin ended their statement by encouraging voters to be careful in discerning the truth from false allegations.
It can be recalled that at the start of the local campaign period, Bayung Angeles mayoralty candidate Amos Rivera stated on social media that Bayung Angeles pledges “to have a clean, honest and fair election” and will not resort to fake news and black propaganda “to deceive our voters from the truth.”
