Presidential candidate Jose Montemayor Jr. raised a number of false and baseless claims about rival Manila Mayor Isko Moreno and the media during an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC) on March 1, 2022.
Following up on his claim during the CNN presidential debate two days earlier, Montemayor baselessly claimed that Moreno “paid a lot of media” to make it appear that he was wrong in claiming that American billionaire Bill Gates donated $15 million to the Manila mayor’s campaign.
“No, I was correct… The fact-checker of Facebook, the fact-checker of YouTube, they themselves realized that I am correct,” Montemayor said.
This is false.
No fact-checking organization rated his statement during the CNN presidential debate as accurate, with Philstar.com, Rappler and TV5 all rating it as false.
In a separate fact-check, ABS-CBN also debunked Montemayor’s claim and provided context on the donation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the city of Manila.
Based on the foundation’s website, it committed $319,147 (almost P16 million) to the local government to “procure and demonstrate innovative, safe, off-grid toilet products and utility services in low-income communities that are not safely reachable by incumbent toilet technologies or utility services.”
