Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia said “don’t mess with us” in February last year in answer to suggestions to place Cebu under lockdown.
But a TikTok video posted on April 20 by @fsansmarcos7 misleadingly implied that Garcia was responding to a now-deleted tweet that the camp of Vice President and presidential bet Leni Robredo doesn’t need Cebu to win the election.
Twitter user @kakampink18’s Jan. 17 tweet read:
Hindi natin kailangan ang Cebu. Kaya nating manalo kahit wala sila. Baliw pala gobernador nila kaya nakina LBM ang suporta (We don’t need Cebu. We can win even without them. Their governor is crazy, that’s why she supports LBM).
Garcia and her One Cebu party recently endorsed Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s candidacy. The tweet had referred to Marcos, nicknamed Bongbong, as “LBM,” a twist on his other nickname, “BBM.”
The Tiktok video, captioned “don’t mess with Gwen Garcia, or else? [Y]ou will regret it,” extracted Garcia’s clip from a press conference she held on Feb. 19, 2021 during which she responded to recommendations to lock down Cebu after new COVID-19 mutations were detected in the province. Garcia said at the 25:17 mark:
My message is, don’t mess with us, we can take care of ourselves. I will not and never again accept a lockdown. I’ll fight for Cebu and the Cebuanos because Cebu is moving on and moving forward.
The video led some commenters to believe that Garcia was responding to the overlaid tweet.
The video has received over 2.8 million views, 252,000 likes and 4,961 shares as of writing. (ML)