FALSE

Rep. Rodante Marcoleta has not been appointed the new justice secretary, contrary to a claim spreading on Facebook.

Facebook page UniTeam BBM-Sara posted the false claim on May 15:

WELL DESERVED. CONGRATULATIONS to our newly appointed Department of Justice Secretary Atty. Rodante Marcoleta. Di rin pala nasayang ang votes namin syo (Our votes were not wasted).

Although a list of possible candidates for presumptive president Ferdinand Marcos’ Cabinet circulating on Facebook includes Marcoleta as justice secretary, Marcos hasn’t officially disclosed his choice.

He has to date only announced that he would name his running mate Sara Duterte education secretary and his campaign manager, Benjamin Abalos Jr., as interior secretary.

But Marcos cannot appoint anyone to public office yet as he is still not the country’s president. He has not been formally proclaimed by Congress as president and, more important, taken his oath as president.

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FactRakers is a Philippines-based fact-checking initiative of journalism majors at the University of the Philippines-Diliman working under the supervision of Associate Professor Yvonne T. Chua of the University of the Philippines’ Journalism Department. Associate Professor Ma. Diosa Labiste, also of the Journalism Department, serves as editorial consultant.

The name of the initiative, coined from the words “fact” and “raker,” is inspired by the term “muckrakers,” first used in the early 1900s by American president Theodore Roosevelt to express his annoyance at progressive, reform-minded journalists at the time.

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