Mauritius Défimedia says Prime Minister's tweet calling French President for help is fake 🙄
I was surprised to read on defimedia.info that a tweet by the Prime Minister of Mauritius, P. K. Jugnauth, in which he reaches out to the French President, Emmanual Macron, is a fake tweet. The news article says that the Prime Minister's Office would like to inform the public that it is a
I was surprised to read on defimedia.info that a tweet by the Prime Minister of Mauritius, P. K. Jugnauth, in which he reaches out to the French President, Emmanual Macron, is a fake tweet. The news article says that the Prime Minister's Office would like to inform the public that the tweet in "circulation" is fake. The article does not mention the PMO communique in verbatim or a link to the communique if it's available online. Therefore, it is difficult to say whether the communique means to say there is a fake twitter account of the Prime Minister of Mauritius
The news article published a screenshot of the tweet which shows the Prime Minister's Twitter handle @PKJugnauth.
To avoid any dispute about the existence of this article I archived it at the Wayback Machine.
I do not follow the Prime Minister on Twitter but I did notice the tweet in my feed yesterday after several people from my Twitter network retweeted it.
The Twitter account with handle @PKJugnauth is a verified account, has about 21,800 followers and mentions the @MauritiusPM Twitter handle in it's profile description. The latter handle is also a verified Twitter account described as the PM's Office of Mauritius and it retweeted the call for help by @PKJugnauth that addressed @EmmanuelMacron, the French President.
I am embedding the tweet reply by the French President which also includes the original tweet which is allegedly fake as per the article.
Lorsque la biodiversité est en péril, il y a urgence d’agir. La France est là. Aux côtés du peuple mauricien. Vous pouvez compter sur notre soutien cher @PKJugnauth. Nous déployons dès à présent des équipes et du matériel depuis La Réunion. https://t.co/uxoNhAQWfS
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) August 8, 2020
I could not find any communique on the Prime Minister's Office website mentioning these tweets.
Now, if fake Twitter accounts, that happen to be verified Twitter accounts, with thousands of followers, belonging to the Mauritian Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office, exist... then this is a very serious matter.
Else, if the Prime Minister's Office issued a misleading communique about the Prime Minister's tweet and that the latter is not fake, then also it is a very serious matter.
Finally, if defimedia.info published a communique supposedly issued by the Prime Minister's Office, turns out to be « fake news » rather than « fake tweet » then I just do not know what to say. 😐
Update
This topic was discussed by a few people on Twitter. Several ministries and embassies are currently following the @PKJugnauth Twitter account.
Rabin Bhujun wrote about "le vrai faux compte Twitter du Premier ministre mauricien" on LinkedIn.