Please stop asking us to applaud a senator who sneaked in and out of his official duties and trained and prepared for his personal bout on time supposedly singularly devoted to us. And amid the many burning issues.
In fact, it is Pacquiao who should be grateful that he is *allowed* to continue practicing his chosen career while being an elected public servant. Lawyers, doctors and just about everybody else cannot legally do that.
Cheering and applauding Senator Pacquiao now in 2018 is not the same as cheering and applauding him in 2008. He has since became a congressman and now Senator. He has come out as a bigot, and sided with crooks. That’s a huge difference.
It would have been totally different had Pacquiao chose to be a politician of the new type: anti-corruption, anti-landlordism, anti-foreign intervention. In short, if he became progressive and patriotic. But he didn’t. He has been a trapo through and through. No pride in that.
Also: As an advocate of workers’ welfare, I don’t look kindly on the fact that Pacquiao is an endorser of Uni-Pak, a company that has been practicing contractualization for the past 30 years. Yung pinambayad sa kanya ay resulta ng pambabarat ng Uni-Pak sa mga manggagawa.
To top it all, compared to pre-2008 Pacquiao who was a patriot, he offered this bout and this victory to his lord and savior Duterte, who was there. Nobody else colored this the way he did. Pacquiao himself made it clear that it is in the service of his tyrannical hero Duterte.
From People’s Champ to Duterte’s Champ. It is a study of the rise and fall of a hero in the eyes of those who once elevated him and saw him as a national hero sans the baggage of divisive politics.
