A lawyer with a Twitter handle @bikoy got tagged in new diagrams purportedly mapping the Malacañang-alleged network plotting against President Rodrigo Duterte.
The name “Bikoy” is the hooded narrator in the “Ang Totoong Narcolist” videos. Peter Joemel Advincula, who identified himself as a reformed illegal drug trade operator, earlier this week surfaced to be the personality behind the videos.
Layer Victor Villanueva, who happened to have a Twitter handle of the same name as the mysetious figure in the viral videos, decried his sudden involvement in the controversy.
His account on the microblogging platform was also tagged by some media outlets.
Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the accent of Advincula did not match that of Bikoy based on a voice analysis he presented to reporters on May 8.
Rather than Advincula, Panelo claimed the narrator was a certain Bong Banal.
Panelo also released new web diagrams of people who the Palace believes are part of the massive scheme to unseat Duterte. Many of the organizations and personalities in the matrix, however, are known critics of the president.
The previously published matrix tagged some media organizations Vera Files, Rappler and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
Among those named in the new matrix include television personality Gretchen Ho and Olympic weightlifting medalist Hidlyn Diaz, both of whom were surprised about being included in the alleged network.
Panelo said the new matrix arose from intelligence reports, sources of which were not disclosed to the media to allow for independent verification.
Since 2016, the president and his officials have linked critics to alleged destabilization efforts, a few of which have been denied by the military.
Reactions
The name of veteran journalist Ellen Tordesillas of news site VERA Files appears anew in the diagram. She again denounced Panelo’s allegations as baseless and fabricated.
“I deny allegations by Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo linking me to any imagined destabilization efforts against the administration. I challenge him to present evidence, not just silly diagrams,” Tordesillas said in a statement on Wednesday, May 8.
The National Union of Journalists, meanwhile, described the Palace’s previously teased “bombshell” as a fictional narrative to spread fear ahead of the May 13 midterm election.
“At best, this is yet another badly concocted fiction meant to scare their perceived enemies but which only ends up making them look ridiculous,” the NUJP said on Facebook.
The group also expressed its concern over wed administrator Rodel Jayme, who was charged with inciting to sedition despite lack of evidence.
“At worst, and this is a real concern, we cannot imagine what pressures Jayme might have undergone or be made to undergo to underpin this fallacy,” it said.
“And we stress again this government’s criminal endangerment of people it accuses of serious offenses without an iota of evidence,” it added.
Other critics of the government who were identified in the diagrams also denied their involvement in the supposed ouster plot.