Karen Davila, in a segment of ANC’s “Headstart” which she hosts, asked Rep. Manny Pacquiao why he attended only four sessions in 2014. With neither a sense of remorse nor shame for his irresponsible behavior as an elected official of the land, he said that he was busy preparing for his forthcoming bouts. Out of these bouts, Pacquiao has become a multibillionaire, accumulating in the process an unpaid tax of P2.65 billion!
And now (merciful God!), Pacquiao is running for the Senate this coming 2016 elections. I’ll bet, he’ll win again because people will vote for him not for his sterling record as a congressman but for his pugilistic conquests inside the boxing ring. As an “honorable senator,” Pacquiao promised to focus more on his duties as a senator and hinted at retirement from the ring.
I believe leaving behind boxing is not so much due to any divine inspiration as because he’s an old and wounded fighter who now runs on empty.
Old habits die hard. Pacquiao lives and survives on the adulation of the crowd. Any senator worthy of the job must stay away from the glitzy world of entertainment and celebrity affairs (e.g., hosting entertainment TV shows) in order to focus his attention on serious legislative agenda. I believe Pacquiao has no capacity to do this. His brain is wired on something else like basketball, preaching and giving doles to the poor, but certainly not on weighty national issues.
But the tragedy is that the masses will vote for him nonetheless because, like Pacquiao, they too have lost their capacity to discriminate between what is authentic and what is phony.
—CARLOS ISLES, carlos_isles@yahoo.com