AFTER years of career in boxing, Manny Pacquiao’s greatest match has come. Not with a Mexican. Not with an American. It is with Tatay Digong.
I am no defender of President Duterte, it is just that I do not find Senator Manny Pacquiao, as of now, a solid critic of the government especially this administration.
We need to go back to the context of the senator’s discourse which is basically partisan in nature. If only his true colors were shown at the onset of this whole political show, he would have earned much support and respect. A good critic should not only state facts; he should also be consistent. Granting for the sake of argument that what he has been saying is the “truth of it all” unfortunately he lacks that needed consistency which we should have seen from the start of this all. For example, it was reported in May of this year that the good senator described the president’s stance against China as “waning” and “lacking.” We know, however, that Duterte never had a clear and strong stance “against” China to begin with. How come Pacquiao did not say anything or much about this at the start?
A simple review of the Duterte-Pacquiao relationship would lead us back to 2016 when then-presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte supported the senator-wannabe. As quoted by one news source, Duterte said: “even if he is not on my side, kindly support Pacman. He is my friend. We are both from Mindanao.” For his part, the senator supported the president’s campaign against the use of illegal drugs. He was even quoted by Reuters to have said: “God put him there for a reason, for purpose - to discipline the people.”
So if all of these tirades against corruption are genuine, the criticism should have been made long before. Sadly, the senator himself enjoyed being the beneficiary of Duterte’s endorsements. Unlike other stand-alone critics of the president or the administration, Manny’s is something that seems to have suddenly grown like a mushroom from nowhere. Precisely why it is easy for the president to retort and remind his friend turned critic to first “study” and then improve his “attendance” in Congress.
This drama between President Duterte and Senator Pacquiao is not new. An insider exposing corruption is neither new. We were done watching the Estrada-Chavit showdown. We know that things like this are not plain “goodwill.” Where there is politics, there is always interest. A battle between one politician versus another is not and cannot be likened to a war between heaven and hell, light and darkness, or God and Satan.
A battle between two politicians is a fight overpower. It is a contestation that necessitates division; one that begs for people’s sympathies and allegiance, and eventually their choices – their votes. The litmus test of Manny’s genuineness in his critique of the government, especially his friend Tatay Digong is his attitude and behavior in view of the upcoming elections. As I have said somewhere: Manny should have stayed in his boxing career because doing so could have earned him a surer ticket to heaven. Now that he has entered the world of politics, he cannot but be “perceived” as a black kettle quarreling the black pots.