On Wednesday, November 15 a Facebook post was claimed to have been made by the official page of the Executive Mansion but was later deleted. The now deleted post, which also included charts of purported election results of the November 14 presidential run-off, was also shared on the same day by Presidential aid Sekou Kalasco Damaro.
The post reads: “Thanks to all our great partisans for showing up and owning to this great fight. Indeed, let everyone go to their closets or tailors to prepare themselves a suit befitting for the occasion. 6+6=? Good will always triumph over evil”.
LVL Fact Checking Desk contacted the Presidential Press Secretary about the deleted post, but he denied that the Executive Mansion official Facebook page made it.
Mr. Isaac Solo Kelgbeh later released a statement on the Executive Mansion Facebook page further denying the post was made, claiming that it was made by pseudo accounts purporting as the Executive Mansion page.
We reviewed the post and analyzed the Executive Mansion page using online fact checking tool and found that the post sharing the purported election results was made by the official page of the Executive Mansion but was later deleted.
Rating Justification
First, we reviewed the post and found that it was the exact same post shared by the verified account of the Mr. Demaro. The post by the Presidential Aide was made five minutes after the post was deleted on the Executive Mansion website.
We also reviewed the text and charts shared by the two posts and found that the wordings and images are exactly the same.
Additionally, we used an online tool to determine who posted the deleted post and found that the post was first made by the official page of the Executive Mansion.
We also reviewed all other pages with similar name as “Executive Mansion-Liberia” and found two Facebook pages with similar name: “Executive Mansion-Liberia” and a page with named “Executive Mansion” which has the Coat of Arms or Seal as its profile photo.
We then analyzed the first two pages named “Executive Mansion Liberia”. We discovered that the although the two pages have the same name, one is named “The Executive Mansion Liberia”. This page was created May 16, 2016, has a total of 2.2K followers, and the last time the page made a post was October 27, 2017. It doesn’t identify as a government organization.
For the official page of the Executive Mansion, it is named Executive Mansion-Liberia and was created April 2, 2018, and it is categorized as a Government Organization.
For the third page with the name “Executive Mansion” which has the Seal as its profile photo, it has over 20,000 followers, was created June 9, 2012, and is categorized as a Government Organization. This page’s transparency section also contains the official URL of the Executive Mansion website, email address of the Ministry of State and other authentic information. The last post made by this page is February 3, 2018 but we found out that the page had consistently posted about the Executive Mansion and the presidency until February 2018.
Our analysis of these three pages shows that one of the page name Executive Mansion with the Coat of Arms or Seal as its profile photo was the official page of the presidency before the “Executive Mansion-Liberia” page was created on April 2, 2018. The page named The Executive Mansion Liberia” is not an official page of the Executive Mansion.
We then checked the other two pages and found no trace of the deleted posts and also used online tool to determine if any of the two other pages created and deleted the post but found no results.
Conclusion
We conclude that the post was made by the official page of the Executive Mansion and was later deleted. The same post was shared by the verified account of the Presidential Aide. Therefore, claims that the Executive Mansion used the official page to publish purported election results is correct.
This report was developed with the support of Internews through the USAID Media Activity project. The funder has no say in the editorial decision leading to the production of this content.