Estranged bedfellows?

GENERAL SANTOS CITY — World boxing icon Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao entertained thoughts of being a politician sometime back, although he did not succeed at first. He first ran for the position of mayor in General Santos City, but was not able to defeat the incumbent Darlene Antonino-Custodio, daughter of the prominent South Cotabato political family, the Antoninos. In 2010, he succeeded in being elected congressman of the lone district of neighboring Sarangani province, actually his home province prior to his transfer of residence to more urban Gensan.

Many local observers considered his defeat to a diminutive but spunky and more experienced female politician a manifestation of the local voting population’s “wisdom” of electing someone already more familiar in running a local government unit rather than one who was just a popular boxer, nothing more. I remember hearing jokes about this defeat, making fun of Pacquiao’s inexperience as a politician, noting that he may not have been knocked out in the boxing ring at that time, but he got a powerful knockout from a tiny but feisty lady politician in the local political arena.

Pacman’s generosity is widely acclaimed; ordinary folk from different barangays in Gensan are known to queue up at one of his mansions in the city to receive just a simple packed lunch or a few hundred pesos. All these are paltry sum compared to his publicized earnings every time he throws himself into the boxing ring; according to sportswriters, his boxing bouts bring him multimillion US dollars in revenues, whether he wins or loses. Forbes magazine once estimated his earnings at a mindboggling $300 million.

His legendary boxing skills aside, Pacman is also known to be a spendthrift, financing businesses for members of his family, especially his wife Jinkee, and relatives like brothers Bobby and Ruel Pacquiao who have become local politicians, and even friends who have joined local politics. Nigel Collins, a sports analyst and former editor of the boxing magazine, The Ring, once wrote that Pacman’s lifestyle is “part of a financial boondoggle that is consuming money faster than Manny is making it.” (Boondoggling is wasting money or time for unnecessary or questionable projects deceptively marketed as having a lot of value.)

When Pacman was elected senator in the May 2016 elections, he allied himself immediately with newly elected President Duterte, praising the latter as the “anointed one” who was sent by God to “discipline the people.” Pacman also supported several questionable presidential decisions on the detention of Sen. Leila de Lima, harping on alleged “immoral” acts committed by the lady senator. Pacman’s alliance with a self-confessed new version of “Hitler” like Mr. Duterte surprised many people, including Collins himself. In one of his sports columns, Collins said that while he is an avid fan of Pacman as a boxer, his politics (of becoming a Duterte ally) unnerved him. This alliance made Mr. Duterte and Pacquiao strange bedfellows, politicians coming from different family and socioeconomic backgrounds but finding common ground in their self-acclaimed compassion (“malasakit”) for the poor. Being an ally of the President, Pacman helped create an enabling environment for Mr. Duterte’s draconian anti-human rights policies, engendering a bloody war against the poor, contrary to both of their populist claims.

But less than a year before the next national elections, Pacquiao unleashed a volley of explosive claims about the extent of corruption in the Duterte administration. This has spawned a series of heated verbal exchanges between the two, driving a deep wedge between former unlikely allies.

We hope this is not just for show, and that Pacman is not acting based on a script. Or have Mr. Duterte and Pacman become estranged bedfellows instead? If so, he needs more than his fists to fight with someone like Mr. Duterte, or to become the next president.

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