A PRESIDENTIAL contender, who is offering a unifying brand of governance once elected into office, could have an additional quality etched to his name — as a pacifying leader.

“Let us give Rappler another chance,” Partido Federal standard-bearer Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos, Jr. urged his restive supporters as he tried to pacify them from pursuing a hate campaign against the controversial media entity.

“Those behind the manipulation of a simple exercise to get the voters’ pulse on the 2022 presidential race might have been overwhelmed by their desire to accomplish whatever mission assigned to them… so let’s give them another chance to find honesty in their heart,” said Marcos.

Marcos, however, thanked and congratulated his millions of supporters for checking the survey facts of Rappler, the Facebook fact-checker in the Philippines, which initiated an online pulsing for presidential preference in the upcoming 2022 elections.

He also exhorted them to remain steadfast and vigilant amid reports that some poll trendings for the 2022 presidential race is being manipulated to favor certain candidates, particularly those with low survey numbers.

Who will fact-check the fact-checkers?

Along with angry vloggers, multitudes of BBM supporters early last week unleashed their wrath against media entity Rappler after its online survey for presidential preference ‘caught fire’ in various platforms of social media.

Rappler, the fact-checker of Facebook Philippines, had launched a presidential survey on the said social media platform, assigning different emoticons to presidential aspirants in the list on which to signify a vote.

The wow emoticon was assigned to Partido Federal standard-bearer Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr., while the heart was assigned to independent candidate Leni Robredo. The Laugh emoticon, to Panfilo Lacson, Like emoticon to Isko Moreno and the Care emoticon to Manny Pacquiao.

Rappler’s alleged manipulation was discovered after a netizen uploaded on Tiktok, another social media platform, a video of him checking out the emoticons hit for each of the candidates.

On the video uploaded, the total number of votes cast for Robredo was already 161,000 while Marcos only had 87,000.

However, the video showed that upon counter-checking the pages, the actual Wow emoticons far outnumbered the heart emoticons.

Vlogger Kasangga Jay claimed it was another attempt by what he called the “biased” media outfit to deceive the public.

“Nakalulungkot isipin na niloloko na naman tayo nitong biased press, biased media na ito sapagkat sa kanilang survey ay tila kwestiyonable o tila kataka-taka ang nilalaman nito, mga kasangga. Tila may mali kasi binabalandra na si Leni ang nangunguna, with heart reactions pero nung inusisa nung Tiktok uploader ay ang nangunguna ang mga Wow reactions na para kay Bongbong Marcos,” he said.

Another vlogger Maui Becker, also known as Princess Maui, expressed suspicion that, as administrator, the new outfit had access to inactive accounts and used those accounts to cast a vote for Robredo.

“Hindi kinaya ng inyong technical maneuver, pagmamani-obra ng survey. Hindi nila kinaya ang dami o buhos ng followers ni BBM. Hindi nila kakayanin dahil hindi lang naman ang mga ito ‘yung mga netizens na namumulat na at naa-appreciate nila si BBM,” Princess Maui said, adding “Di ko kayang tanggapin na nangunguna ka sa survey sa akin,” in parody of an April Boy song.

“Hindi kinaya ng sistema Ninyo, hindi kinaya ng program niyo Facebook and Rappler kung tinambakan man nila agad si Leni ng 100k o 150k para mahirapan si BBM…Baka may access sila sa mga FB accounts na dormant na at ginamit sa survey…most of the Leni supporters were accounts of Pakistanis, Arab, poseur, fake accounts,” he added.

Princess Maui also expressed suspicion that the survey debacle was a pilot test of plans to rig the presidential elections in May next year.

“Pwedeng this is a practice of the balak nilang pandaraya next year sa elections, precursor of some kind, test pilot ng kanilang pandaraya,” he pointed out.

Rappler apologizes, takes down the polling as results continue to show BBM a runaway winner Rappler deleted its Facebook presidential survey after its propaganda moves came to light under the scrutinizing eyes of netizens.

Rappler also apologized to angry netizens and explained that the survey had to be taken down since it was not aligned with their objectives.

However, even after taking it down, vloggers still chided the media outfit for its alleged attempt to deceive the public into believing that independent presidential aspirant Leni Robredo is now getting the support of netizens.