CLAIM: President Marcos’s UN speech drew a sparse audience, unlike overseas speeches made by predecessors Corazon Aquino and Benigno Aquino III

RATING: MISSING CONTEXT

Context was missing when Facebook user Ibarra Tomas Siapno Rn posted a viral meme comparing the sparse audience drawn by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York last Sept. 21 with the thick crowds that applauded the overseas speeches of two of his predecessors.

It was an apple vs. oranges comparison. 

Marcos was in New York City, the Big Apple, to speak before the 77th UNGA, part of a long list of heads of state and government scheduled to address the annual assembly.

In the viral meme, Siapno compared the UNGA audience with the packed joint session of the Japanese Diet that President Benigno Aquino III addressed in 2015, and the joint session of the US Congress that gave President Corazon Aquino three standing ovations in 1986.

Marcos addressed delegates to the yearly policy-making assembly of an intergovernmental organization, the UN, while the two Aquinos gave speeches before a totally different venue, the joint session of a legislature.

Joint sessions are “moments of great significance” where members of separate chambers of congress gather under one roof, according to the History, Art and Archives site of the US House of Representatives. 

To be asked to deliver a speech before a joint session of a legislature is a high honor accorded to a visiting head of state, and the event is thus usually well-attended.

In contrast, the UNGA has been derided as a platform of tyrants. Muammar Gaddafi, Hugo Chavez, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad all once used the podium to grandstand before the international community.

Ibarra Tomas Siapno Rn’s viral but context-challenged meme has been shared 13,000 times and has drawn 24,000 reactions on Facebook.

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