The Orange Democratic Movement party director of communications has disowned the post.
Syndicated Story By PesaCheck.
A screengrab of a Facebook post purportedly sent out by Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) director of communications, Philip Etale, is FAKE.
In the post, Etale castigates Anne Waiguru, the Governor of Kirinyaga County, for decamping from the ruling Jubilee Party to United Democratic Alliance (UDA).
The post is accompanied by an image of Waiguru with Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto, when the latter received her at his Karen residence in Nairobi on 26 October 2021.
“After we sacrificed to sanitize and save you from being impeached you now join UDA?” reads the post in part.
On 26 June 2020, Waiguru survived impeachment after the Senate committee delinked her from procurement irregularities in the county.
While senators allied to President Uhuru Kenyatta, the Jubilee leader, and Raila Odinga, his ODM counterpart, supported the senate committee’s conclusion, those associated with DP Ruto disagreed. It is this incident that the post refers to in the above quote.
The screengrab has also been shared here, here, here, here, and here.
However, a review of Etale’s Facebook account reveals no such information was shared on his timeline.
On 26 October 2021, Etale posted the said screenshot with a “Fake” stamp alongside a message disowning it.
“Even in a dreamland, I can NOT post such nonsense,” reads his post in part.
PesaCheck has looked into the screengrab of a Facebook post purportedly by Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) director of communications, Philip Etale, and finds it to be FAKE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Simon Muli and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Rose Lukalo.
The article was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
