Collage of 'Philippine traffic conditions' misuses Vietnam photo

Supporters of President Ferdinand Marcos have misrepresented a photo of a congested road in Vietnam as depicting gridlock in the Philippines during his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte's term. The posts misleadingly compare the picture with one of a busy Manila highway taken in May 2025.

The misleading collage was posted on Facebook on May 28 by a content creator who has previously shared pro-Marcos misinformation debunked by AFP.

The post features two photos, with one showing a gridlocked intersection labelled "DUTERTE TIME". This is contrasted with a second photo of orderly traffic superimposed with an image of Marcos and labelled "PBBM TIME", using the current leader's initials.

The post received over 30,000 reactions, comments and shares, and has circulated elsewhere on Facebook, X and TikTok.

Marcos swept to power in 2022 after joining forces with the Duterte family in the elections that year but the alliance began crumbling almost immediately (archived link).

The feud exploded into open warfare this year with the impeachment of Duterte's daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, and the subsequent arrest and transfer of the ex-president, to face charges at the International Criminal Court at the Hague tied to his deadly drug war.

Comments show people appear to believe the claim -- users showered praise on Marcos, whose popularity dropped steeply following his deputy's impeachment and predecessor's stunning arrest (archived link).

"'Du-dirty' made a lot of mess. PBBM is fixing these now," one wrote.

"It's obvious, under PBBM there is change and people are more disciplined," another wrote.

However, the photo showing major congestion was not taken in the Philippines.

A reverse image search of the image labelled "Duterte Time" found it shows a gridlock Vietnam's capital Hanoi (archive link).

Chinese state-run media organisation China.org.cn published the photo with credits to state news agency Xinhua.

It is captioned: "Photo taken on Sept. 8, 2015 shows a traffic jam on a main road in Hanoi, Vietnam. Heavy rains occurred early Tuesday morning in Hanoi left several streets flooded and caused traffic jam during rush hour. [Photo/Xinhua]."

The area where the gridlock occurred was at the intersection of Le Van Luong and Nguyen Tuan streets as seen on Google Maps (archived link).

The second photo of traffic credited to Marcos' government was taken from a video clip posted on May 26, when the government resumed its "no contact apprehension policy (NCAP)" for motorists in the Philippine capital, which uses CCTV to detect traffic violations (archived link).

Text overlaid on the video says, "Commonwealth Now / May 26, 2025/ NCAP."

Commonwealth Avenue is the country's widest highway which sees a high volume of traffic daily (archived link).

The TikTok clip matches similar scenes at Commonwealth Avenue published by local broadcasters GMA News, Net25 and the Metro Manila Development Authority, the government agency managing traffic in Manila (archived here, here, and here).

June 6, 2025 Minor tweak in headline to say 'misuses'