Cassandra Ong's grad pic scrutinized at House probe; Dan Fernandez becomes target of jokes

Even a photo showing Cassandra Ong in graduation garb was scrutinized at the House quad-committee's Thursday probe into illegal POGOs and their links to extrajudicial killings and the Duterte administration's drug war. Ong, whose citizenship and birth certificate have been the subject of questions in past hearings, was once again quizzed on her educational background, this time with an apparent graduation pic shown to her by lawmakers. "Naki-picture lang po ako diyan," Ong said, recalling the shoot was actually for graduating students of the Alternative Learning System (ALS) and that she was not one of them. According to Ong, she only attended ALS classes "twice or thrice," and did not finish the program. "Pumunta lang po ako, tapos sakto, may [graduation shoot]," she claimed. Later in the hearing, the joint committee's co-chairperson Rep. Dan Fernandez, whose phone contained the picture shown to Ong, became the target of jokes by his colleagues, as they wondered how he came to be in possession of it.