GENERAL SANTOS CITY, Philippines — Congressman-elect Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao’s life in his complicated home country, particularly in the violence-torn southern island of Mindanao where he was born into abject poverty, is so vastly different from his soft-spoken, humble boxing superstar persona, the contrast can make you drop your jaw at times.
In Mindanao, gorgeous mountainous regions and miles of palm-lined beaches lie undeveloped amid lush farms and squalid family lean-tos. Here, the contrast between the multitudes of the shockingly poor and the select wealthy few who control the Philippines’ second largest island often is determined by the bag of money or barrel of a high-powered firearm.
For as much as Pacquiao, 31, wants to be a man of the people — he identifies with them after growing up on the streets, supporting his single mother, Dionisia, and five younger siblings by hustling food as a child — he also must protect himself from them.
When Pacquiao walks the streets in bustling metropolises of Manila or Quezon City, the municipalities of South Cotabato, where his main house is located in General Santos City, or through a muddy village path in remote part of Sarangani Province, he is constantly surrounded by armed protection.
That’s because Pacquiao also is swarmed by worshipers, who adore him as a boxer and revere him as an example that rags-to-riches tales do exist. Filipinos reach out to touch him, pat him on the back, shake his hand or thrust their children toward him. “Pacman” revels in these encounters and becomes a crowd surfer among the masses.
All the while, the police and private security hired to protect a national treasure from harm keep a quick hand on the trigger. They tense up if they spy something suspicious in the teeming masses smothering Sir Manny. The handguns and rifles are ready, if necessary.
As the seven-time boxing champion traveled in late-night campaign convoys to the remote villages in the far southern Sarangani Province he now represents as a politician-elect, there was muscle and firepower everywhere.
This is when the conflict between Pacman, the smiling, soft-spoken boxing superstar, and Pacquiao, the power-wielding Filipino celebrity and figurehead, became most striking.
“The Peoples Champ” moved around either in a bulletproof Chevy Tahoe or armored black Hummer, his daily transportation of choice and necessity.
For the foreigners traveling with him in the campaign convoys, it was vitally important to jump into the speeding caravan early and not lose sight of the boxing politician as he randomly selected a village, a city hall or a rally in which to stop and offer his promises to fight poverty and corruption.
Pacquiao’s homes are surrounded by armed guards, local police and razor wire along the walled compounds. To fund a carefully organized political campaign that one Pacquiao insider told me cost the boxing champ at least 600 million pesos (about $6.6 million), it was surreal to see boxes of money — campaign funds — stacked up in his General Santos Home.
Every penny was needed to defeat wealthy businessman Roy Chiongbian, 61, for Sarangani’s congressional seat. And Pacquaio, who earned $12 million for demolishing Joshua Clottey at Cowboys Stadium in March and stands to reap at least $50 million when he eventually faces unbeaten welterweight Floyd Mayweather Jr., was prepared to spend whatever it took to get himself elected.
That also meant employing and arming the small army that protects Team Pacquaio and attends to his every need.
On the final night of campaigning on May 8, my driver and bodyguard Rudy, was less complacent about the daily ordeal of tailing Pacquaio. He was tense and somewhat nervous.
“I will stay back a little tonight from the car of Mr. Manny,” Rudy explained as we took off again, lurching around curves and driving well in excess of 100 kmh, down the pitch dark, narrow two-lane highway toward Malandag.
Why? “If there is trouble, you don’t want to be too close to the politician car,” Rudy explained. “You want to stay back. They get hit. You don’t.”
Wealthy people, and especially politicians at any level, are targets for kidnapping and assassination anywhere in the Philippines but particularly so in Mindanao, where Roman Catholicism is the rule but Muslim regions often are controlled by roving bands of terrorists that attempt to infiltrate other areas of the island.
Trouble could mean anything — a police or army checkpoint manned by assassins rather than officials, a hand grenade tossed at a politician’s vehicle from a passing motorcycle. It could mean an encounter, good or bad, with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which operates quietly here but has a long history of violent attacks.
At worst, it might entail what would almost certainly be a deadly attack by a rogue band of the Abu Sayyaf, the feared Muslim separatist group with ties to al Qaeda that is responsible for countless kidnappings, murders and extortion plots throughout Maguindano, Mindanao and the Antonymous Regions of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
As an American, I was a walking bull’s-eye. As a blonde American woman traveling in these areas — looking so alien that people swarmed me in villages, smiling and shaking my hand as if I was visiting royalty — I was even more of a target.
It was this constant uneasiness that hung over every day I spent in the Philippines. I adore the people. I deeply respect their incredible work ethic and desire to live peacefully.
I abhor the corruption, violence and poverty that strangles these Filipinos’ otherwise simple, beautiful lives.
During my May 10 election day spent canvassing of remote polling places through Sarangani Province, I met a MILF leader who was monitoring activity at a precinct in Alabel. He stood near teachers and a Roman Catholic group also assigned to act as poll watchers, while nearly 1,000 registered voters patiently endured long lines, heavy rain and lengthy waits because of a cranky automatic voting machine that worked intermittently.
Like many that day, the MILF member was heavily armed, carrying a .45 caliber automatic pistol on his hip and an AK-47 assault rifle that is as common in Mindanao as a Jeepney on the roads. He looked no different than the Philippine Army soldiers also watching over the voting process.
We chatted about why I was there. I showed him the digital images in my camera and let him listen as I interviewed voters. “You’re choosing new leaders,” I told him, “and I want to watch it happen.”
That made my new MILF friend smile broadly.
When I moved in to take a closer look at his AK-47 with a fully loaded magazine, he abruptly pulled it out, pointed it my face and laughed hysterically — one of many times a rifle was pointed in my face for comedic effect.
“If you came here 10 years ago,” the MILF man told me, “your head would have been rolling in the streets. Before there was control here, someone would have cut off your head and rolled it down the street.”
I laughed — the best defense mechanism in a place where you soon became utterly desensitized to automatic weapons openly carried on the streets and the daily news of bombings and murders that typically go unsolved.
No one wins political office in the Philippines without millions to spend and a big name to back it. That’s why Pacquiao’s landslide congressional victory over the powerful Choingbian family was such an upset. The Chiongbians have controlled business and politics in Sarangani for decades.
But Pacquaio — once a destitute street child — is now just as powerful as any of them.
“Winning this election means more to him than any victory he could ever have in the ring,” said Pacquaio’s longtime advisor, Michael Koncz. “He truly wants to change people’s lives.”
Among some Filipinos, there is skepticism that will ever happen. They’re too accustomed to elected officials who use the power of political office to line their pockets, rather than deliver on promises of reform. Pacquiao railed against this, and it helped get him into Congress.
The Pacquaio name has meant pound-for-pound dominance in the boxing ring. Now it stands for political might and muscle in the Philippines. As a young impoverished boy in the streets, did Pacquiao grow up admiring politicians as role models? He’s never really said.
“I told him I did not want to see him in politics. I discouraged him,” said General Santos City businessman Adriano “Rey” Golingan, who owns the Family Country Hotel in General Santos City and has known Pacquiao since he first entered a boxing gym at age 10. “Politics are dirty. Dirty business. I don’t want to see Manny become dirty.”
Will Pacquaio use his powerful new identity for good? While the world waits to see whether Pacman can destroy “Money” Mayweather in the most-anticipated boxing match this century, his Filipino constituents are eager to see something more tangible: real change, without the stain of corruption they’ve come to know so well.
That’s the greatest test Manny Pacquiao now faces. The Mayweather challenge should be a breeze compared to that.
