A special Congress ‘session’ in Las Vegas again?

SACRAMENTO, California—The presence of Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis “Chavit” Singson in Manny Pacquiao’s camp is the attention grabber—the hook for our story.
Singson relishes his close friendship with the world’s pound-for-pound king and shows it.
With the governor by his side, Pacquiao struggled through a phalanx of cameras and waded through a sea of fans and media types on his official arrival at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas last Tuesday.
The champ is a stickler for custom. So it is likely that Manong Chavit would again march behind the Pacman and astride corner man Buboy Fernandez as uniformed security officers and burly men with the glare of Secret Service agents clear their path to the ring come fight time.
Pacquiao stakes his world welterweight title as a 9-1 choice over Mexico’s Juan Manuel Marquez at the MGM Grand’s Garden Arena here tonight (Sunday morning in Manila).
The underdog Marquez maintains he is the only fighter who’s got Pacquiao’s number and promises a bumpy night ahead for the eight-division world titlist in this, the third bout of their long-running ring feud.
Singson goes from Vigan to Vegas where his chum fights a mega fight. He appears at the opportune moment while the cameras rove and capture his presence for the consumption of millions glued to televisions sets back home.
Pacquiao does not mind and neither does he hide his fondness for the powerful politico, a trusted confidant who in turn savors his share of the Vegas spotlight.
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Which brings us to the rest of our story.
It turns out our fighting legislator and the Ilocano governor are not the only elected Filipino officials in town.
By his own count, Representative Pacquiao says at least 60 members of Congress had made the long trek to be hopefully at ringside for Pacquiao-Marquez 3.
“I’ve already met 20 of them at the gym,” chimed in trainer Freddie Roach.
“We could do a roll call here,” Pacquiao told his colleagues by way of a small group of reporters, including the Inquirer’s Francis T. J. Ochoa. When tickets to the fight are now as rare as a two-headed cobra, rank could go a long way.
Unlike the very visible Chavit, his fellow jetsetters would have liked their quorum nondescript. Leave it to the easy-going honorable gentleman from Sarangani province to blow their cover.
At the end of his chat with the media, Pacquiao, ever the playful type before battle, put on a legislative leader’s move. He leaned into the microphone and shouted: “Session adjourned!”
The last time a winged-footed congressional delegation showed up en masse was in 2009. With the travel justification of cheering for a modern-day Filipino hero, some 50 legislators stampeded to the world’s gambling mecca to witness their future colleague pummel Britain’s Ricky Hatton in an abbreviated fight.
Their wanderlust and thirst for a blood sport satisfied, the congressmen came home only to take it on the chin from watchdog groups, the media, their constituency and even their own in the august halls.
Then and now, the raucous chorus features a familiar refrain: How dare you flaunt wealth and power at a time when the nation stumbles through lean economic times.
Impoverished folks, especially those whose lives had been crushed by recent typhoons that ravaged the islands, must be gnashing their teeth in outrage.
But one thing’s for sure. As a fiery scribe puts it, “The people’s business doesn’t include flying halfway around the globe to witness a boxing match.”