In the race for Presidency, Mr Tharman stepped up his social media game.
He started an Instagram page and a TikTok account, and revealed more about his personal life to Singaporeans.
This includes his lovely wife, Jane Ittogi, who doesn’t actually speak Japanese.
Ittogi doesn’t have any social media account of her own.
But it seems that unsavoury characters out there decided it was time for her to show up on the social media scene anyway.
Fake “Official” Mrs Tharman, Jane Ittogi, Facebook Page Taken Down Shortly After It Emerged
On 3 Sep 2023, a particular Facebook page, Jane Ittogi, suddenly popped up on Facebook.
The page is classified under “Political Organization” and welcomes people to her “official page”.
According to 8World, the page had around 60 followers when they visited. Comments and likes were also left on the photos uploaded within the page.
On 4 Sep 2023, Mr Tharman’s team expressed that the page was a fake, and confirmed that Ittogi did not set up the Facebook page.
The page has since been taken down.
According to the Blue Cat in our office, fake pages get taken down very fast.
Apparently, the cat was so handsome we had fake pages of our own, but they were taken down before we could admire them.
And a huge part of such fast removals can be attributed to our lovely readers who reported them.
You’ll Still See Jane Ittogi’s Face Everywhere
Even though Ittogi will likely remain elusive on social media, you’ll still see her everywhere.
After all, Mr Tharman is the next president of Singapore, and he’s slated to be sworn in on 14 Sep 2023 (which is, unfortunately, just another Thursday).
And the faces of our President and his wife will be plastered all around Singapore.
Ittogi is the latest victim in the spate of online impersonations.
Previously, someone had impersonated Singapore Law Minister K Shanmugam’s ex-wife to put up a nasty, false post years ago.
When the post was released, the Law Minister had considered filing a police report to take action against the false statements but “eventually left it alone because the matter sort of died”.
Well, he has since changed his mind after it resurfaced.
Every 90’s kid’s dream girl, Wong Li Lin, was also impersonated on Instagram.
This impersonator had a greater degree of success.
It managed to fool the Zaobao into thinking it’s the real one after it responded to the Cristiano Ronaldo saga.
The truth only came to light after Wong’s team reached out for a correction.
You can read more about that here.