No, French President Emmanuel Macron did not call Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte a ‘role model’

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on June 21, 2018 at 17:50
  • 1 min read
Online reports have circulated since 2017 saying that French President Emmanuel Macron described Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte as a “role model”. There is no public record of any such statement and a Macron aide told AFP it was “fake news”.

In this post from July 2017, Macron was quoted as saying: “The world may not agree, but let’s admit Duterte is a role model”.

The post claimed Macron said this in relation to supporting Duterte’s war on drugs and terrorism, and said he made the comments at a G20 summit in July 2017 in Germany.

Similar articles have been shared or liked thousands of times on Facebook and re-posted on other social media platforms.

A more recent example is this piece on a blog site.

However an extensive search online, including of major media outlets that reported on the G20 summit, shows no record of Macron describing Duterte as a “role model’.

An adviser to Macron’s office also told AFP the French president did not make such a comment.

“It is fake news,” the adviser told an AFP journalist in Paris on June 20.

 

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