A popular Filipino celebrity congratulated Hidilyn Diaz on her historic win at the Tokyo Olympics 2020 using the flag of another country.
Jinkee Pacquiao, through her Instagram Stories on Monday, July 27, mistook the flag of Sint Maarten, a small country in the Caribbean Islands with the Philippine flag.
Pacquiao shared videos of her streaming the award ceremony where Diaz received the gold medal and the Philippine national anthem was being played at the event for the first time in decades.
However, she accidentally used the flag of Sint Maarten. It also has blue and red colors as the Philippine flag.
Both flags have glaring differences, of course.
The former’s design featured the emblem of Sint Maarten’s coat-of-arms. It has two horizontal stripes with the red above the blue, and a white triangle containing the emblem.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the three colors reflected both the Dutch flag and the French national flag, wherein:
“Sint Maarten shares the island with Saint-Martin, an overseas collectivity of France.”
The Philippine flag also has a similar design of a white triangle and two horizontal stripes. The white hoist triangle contains an eight-ray golden sun and three stars. The two horizontal stripes, meanwhile, has the blue stripe over the red.
Their emoji versions in iPhones are also clearly distinct from one another.
Social media users who noticed this called her out for using the wrong emoji. They also took screenshots of Pacquiao’s Instagram Stories and shared them online.
“Wrong flag girl wrong flag (laughing emojis),” one user said.
“Dearest Jinkee, That’s St. Maarten’s flag not the Philippines (face palm emoji,” another user wrote.
“Can someone please tell Jinkee Pacquiao na hindi flag ng Philippines yan?” another user said.
Some wondered if Pacquiao knew what the national flag actually looked like.
“Jinkee, kilala mo ba ang PH flag? (Philippine flag emoji),” one user said.
