Supporters of Sen. Imee Marcos pushed the false claim that P3PWD Party-list Rep. Rowena Guanzon had said that the senator is a graduate of the University of the Philippines (UP) law school in Diliman, Quezon City.
CLAIM: P3PWD Party-list Rep. Rowena Guanzon said Sen. Imee Marcos was her classmate and a fellow graduate of UP law school.
RATING: FALSE
PressOne.PH recently published a fact-check video on its TikTok channel about the false claims that Sen. Imee Marcos obtained her law degree from the University of the Philippines.
Not long after, netizens erroneously commented that PressOne.PH got it all wrong, as no less than P3PWD Party-list Rep. Rowena Guanzon supposedly said that she and Sen. Marcos were classmates at UP College of Law. Some even wrongly claimed that Guanzon had mentioned that the eldest Marcos daughter received her law degree from UP.
These claims are all FALSE.
A January 2022 story on the GMA News website quoted Guanzon as saying that she and Senator Marcos were seatmates in class. On a March 31 post on her Facebook page, the former Commission on Elections commissioner repeated that she and the senator were UP law classmates. But nowhere in the GMA News article nor in Guanzon’s Facebook post did she mention that Imee Marcos received her law degree from UP.
Attending and finishing coursework does not necessarily mean the student earned the academic degree.
As the UP administration, through its former executive vice president Dr. Teodoro Herbosa, said, “There is no record of her graduation from UPD (UP Diliman) nor any honors or academic distinction received with the university registrar’s office.”
Former UP Law Dean Froilan Bacungan also confirmed that “Imee Marcos, daughter of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, never graduated from the University of the Philippines College of Law”.
Senator Marcos has not presented a copy of her UP law diploma as proof that she did earn the law degree. — Rommel F. Lopez
This fact-check was produced by PressOne.PH as part of a fact-checking grant from the Philippine Fact-Checker Incubator (PFCI) Project. The PFCI supports news organizations to allow them to meet global fact-checking standards under the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles.
PressOne.PH believes that fact-checking is essential to combating misinformation and disinformation, and in informing and educating citizens and voters. Read more of PressOne.PH’s Fact-Checking Policy by clicking here.
The public is welcome to send feedback or requests for fact-checks at news@pressone.ph.
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