Pacquiao the pure believer

Call it plain coincidence, or what have you, but there has suddenly rose a demand for deeper details on Manny Pacquiao’s life and philosophy following his skirmish in Congress over the controversial reproductive health (RH) bill.
National Bookstore has come up with a paperback edition of the Pacquiao autobiography, Pacman: My Story of Hope and Resilience.
Not only that, also out on sale is the translation of that auto-bio in Filipino: Pacman, Kuwento ng Pag-asa, Tiyaga, at Determinasyon.
Meanwhile, out there in the United States, adulation for the Filipino boxing super hero has grown tremendously, coupled with interest on his life and beliefs outside the boxing ring.
In fact, the famous author Andrew Gary Poole, a special correspondent for Time Magazine, has been tasked to add a new chapter to his hot-selling book Pacman: Behind the Scenes with the World’s Best Pound-for-Pound Boxer.
A paperback edition, with a new chapter on Pacquiao the politician, will be out in November.
Said Poole in a letter to the Inquirer:
“I wonder how people seriously take him as a congressman and an eventual candidate for president. From what I’ve heard, his religious beliefs are also his beliefs in politics. Since he could also become the leader of 94 million people, there’s heightened interest on what sort of national leader he could really be.”
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Please share our honest reply:
I’ve not really given serious thought on Pacquiao’s latest political involvement, that saw him dragged into often comic skirmishes with jaded lawmakers, led by the peppery Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago.
It was indeed a bold move on his part but, unlike in his boxing bouts, he readily got clipped after being caught unprepared.
He was still on his feet, last heard of, but I hate to see this political bout he has entered go the full route.
In our country where sentimental popularity always plays a vital part in blindfolding the people in their selection of leaders, he never had a chance of ever staying out of the political ring.
Knowing how dirty Philippine politics is, it’s indeed a slur on Pacquiao’s nobility as a sports legend that he’s also allowed himself to be used as poster boy by the Catholic Church in its fight against the RH Bill.
He sided with the Church without looking intelligently into the issue, as evidenced by the lopsided results of his floor debates.
He did it out of pure faith!
He has indeed helped uplift the Pinoy soul, by making his poor, hungry countrymen to believe they could themselves be winners.
But the best he could do as a politician was provide financial, medical, material support to his constituents.
He’s a legendary philanthropist.
But it’s hard to imagine how he could succeed as lawmaker in the pure sense of the word.
Maybe his advisers and office staff could prepare him for the hard grind on the floor of Congress, but it would be plain idiocy to expect these political people behind him to be as effective and successful as Freddie Roach et al. have been inside the boxing ring.
Pacquiao, whatever they say, is the real deal, the genuine Filipino hero.
Unlike actors, who rode on their melodramatic popularity to gain public office, Pacquiao did not have to rely on a borrowed biography or rented heroism in order to succeed in a movie career and be on top of the world.
He’s the real thing, no false sideburns, no stolen script, no fancy trappings.
It’s odd how he soon enough rode on this genuine heroism to enter a career dominated and manipulated by fakes and pretenders, who got elected into office either by cheating or blinding the people with empty promises, shallow slogans and even inherited heroics.
May God bless the Philippines.