FACT CHECK: Quote card of Hontiveros declaring presidential bid is fake

Claim: Senator Risa Hontiveros said she will run for president due to public clamor, as seen in a quote card.

Rating: FALSE

Why we fact-checked this: The claim was posted on Facebook by Lorna Rulona Cubio Sucre and has gained more than 38,000 reactions, 23,000 comments, and 602 shares as of writing.

The post features a quote card of Hontiveros, supposedly stating that she will run for president out of “conscience” due to public pressure.

The post is captioned, “Ganon ba? Ok, good luck sa 2028 puhon (Really? Okay, good luck in 2028).”

The facts: Hontiveros debunked the quote card as fake on her Facebook account. In a post on January 27, the senator also called on the public’s help to report the post and the account spreading the fake quote card.

The photo of Hontiveros used in the post was from the January 21 Kapihan sa Senado press conference, where she discussed Chinese harassment in the West Philippine Sea and the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee’s ongoing investigation into flood control corruption.

There was no mention of her running for the presidency in the entire runtime of the conference.

Open to possibilities: In May, Hontiveros said she is “open to all possibilities” when asked about potentially serving as the opposition bloc’s standard-bearer in the 2028 presidential elections.

She also reiterated this in an October 2025 talk at Harvard University.

Contrary to the claim made in the fake quote card, however, Hontiveros did not explicitly confirm that she would run for president, nor did she suggest that she was being pressured by the public to do so. – Princess Leah Sagaad/Rappler.com

Keep us aware of suspicious Facebook pages, groups, accounts, websites, articles, or photos in your network by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time.