NY Boxing Examiner | Michael Marley
I know about as much about the powerful clans and the other intricacies of Pinoy politics as I do about conducting brain surgery.
That’s not zero, that is way below zero.
If I am out of step, out of line or plainly ignorant in this essay, I hope you readers will “pull my coat.”
But something my Pinoy pal and former Malacanang operative during the Marcos regime, Hammerin’ Hermie Rivera, told me six or seven months ago keeps ringing in my head.
Rivera is a good family man (six kids?) and can be said to be an expert on boxing, political machinations and iced vodka, not necessarily in that order.
Manny Pacquiao’s next fight may be won he cannot possibly win.
(No link see between any Manny fights and the driveway bout which Tiger Woods just lost by TKO, 3 (Wood).
Oh, this has nothing to do with undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. and everything to do with the extremely influential Chiongbian family.
Roy Chiongbian is Manny’s opponent for the Congressional seat from Pacwife Jinkee’s home turf in Sarangani.
His mother was a governor and his father was a Congressman.
The family owns the economic juggernaut that is Eastern Shipping Lines and they are thick with the Indingenous People’s organization in Sarangani.
Let’s not be tawdry and say the Old Money Chiongbian buy their votes outright.
Let’s just say that, in ways the Daleys in Chicago and the Kennedys in my own home state of Massachusetts can only imagine, the Filipino clan has extremely effective ways of influencing voters.
And that is especially so when said pollgoers are on the payroll of Chiongbian family enterprises to begin with.
I’ve never met any sane person who votes against his own paycheck, have you?
Call it PPV politics, you pay per vote.
Rivera said, like it or not, this is the state of “democracy” in his and Pacman’s native land.
Sure, the teeming masses, the lowest of the low from Sarangani rush to shake Megamanny’s hand or to get an autograph.
But that adulation does not equate to making Pacman’s name on the ballot as a duly nominated People’s Champ Movement representative.
In fact, lest we forget it is a well accepted fact that Pacman put money in the streets of GenSan to, ahem, influence voters in his maiden political voyage.
His electoral ship ran aground, smashed when it ran into Dazzling Darlene Antonio-Custodio and her historically powerful clan.
The decision in Manny’s home city was not really split, it was one-sided.
Pacquiao can beat Mayweather, I’ve no doubt that it is possible.
But how many pols would bang heads with the Daleys in Chitown or the Kennedys in Boston and environs?
Pacman’s political aspirations are admirable but I just want to know who his political “matchmaker” is.
He is capable of dealing effectively with Mayweather.
But Pacquiao-Chiongbian looks like another mismatch, another political TKO loss.
Manny should already know this but his political deeds will never go unpunished
Source: Examiner.com
No comments:
Post a Comment