pulling a rabbit

Just a short post. I’m following the south Cotabato congressional seat battle between Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao and the incumbent Darlene Antonino-Custodio (Why? It’s because she’s a fellow Lasallian, that she’s also a kababayan of mine, and most importantly, that I have a silly crush on her). With little over a month, my bet is that Manny’s corner will be drawing an unexpected uppercut that’ll jar the lovely congresswoman by her jaw – a blitz guerilla campaign after his bout with Solis in mid-April.

Manny’s puppeteers will be using this bout as propaganda tool:
1. This bout will smack hit his target market of voters.
2. Antonino-Custodio’s camp cannot criticize on this fight (and on Manny’s character) because this’ll hurt her campaign since everybody will tune in to this bout whether they’re for his public office bid or not (this one’s very important).
3. With the bout happening this April, this is practically free publicity as people will still remember him come May. Them sneaky bastards.

This goes to show that the delineation between Pacquiao as a politician and as a sports icon is not firmly drawn (not only to himself, but to the voters as well). He himself admitted this by saying that he will still continue his boxing career even if he wins the seat. Think of the repercussions.

Making sense of these predictions, if indeed he wins, do remember that our tax money will be used to pay for his duties as a congressman. His attendance, or non-attendance (whether for personal reasons, or for professional boxing training reasons) have their own impacts. His absence from sessions will mean that one, we will be wasting our taxes for his non-appearance, and secondly, his non-appearance means that his output on representative legislature (whether for decision making, or law proposals, or whatnot) are non-existent.

Thus, this upcoming bout will be a huge boost to his status (and even more so if he wins, and he will win).

Freddie Roach is wise not to comment on this entire hullabaloo, since one, he’s too smart not to dabble into this, and two, it’s obvious that Manny’s political lawyers, not to mention, his backers have had a talk with him.

But of course, the bottom line is this: do you really really believe that Manny possess the intellectual brilliance and rhetoric aptitude to serve as a legislator?