Setting aside his good looks and astonishingly powerful physique, Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao does not have the obvious qualities of a great politician.
He left school at 14, has no experience of politics, business or administration, and his policy platform amounts to little more than trust in God, love of the poor and a vague aspiration to create jobs.
The province where he is standing for Congress, Sarangani, is in the island of Mindanao, one of the most stricken territories in South-East Asia, where chronic poverty and deprivation are underwritten by crime, corruption and political violence.
Pacquiao, 31, does not present himself as a solution to any of these problems. Instead, he offers his semi-divine status as a celebrity ? Manny ?PacMan? Pacquiao, welterweight boxing champion of the world, and Greatest Living Filipino.
When 50 million Filipino voters go to the polls on Monday, PacMan will by no means be the most extraordinary name on the ballot. Other candidates include Joseph Estrada, who is in third place in the race for the presidency, despite having been convicted of corruption during his last stint in the job.
Imelda Marcos, former First Lady to the kleptocratic dictator Ferdinand, is competing for Congress, while her son and daughter run in senatorial and provincial posts. The most colourful candidate was disqualified from running ? Rigoberto Madera, a messianic businessman promised to use the presidency as a springboard for being ?crowned as Earth emperor at Mount Sinai?.
As a democracy the Philippines is the one that puts all others into perspective. Everything about elections here is extreme ? from their sheer scale, to the corruption of the politicians, the violence of the campaigns and the eccentricities of the candidates.
As Britain frets over the distribution of a few hundred seats Filipinos will vote for 18,000 separate posts in the country?s 7,100 islands, from the president to local councillors. The ballot papers, which are printed on both sides, are more than two feet long.
Scores of people have died since the beginning of candidate registration last November ? including 57 in one incident when the private army of one candidate massacred supporters of another.
The blatant buying of political support is accepted as an unremarkable fact of life ? even Pacquiao, who boasts of his incorruptibility, last week offered 500,000 pesos (?7,300) to one village if its voters returned him and the candidates in his ?People?s Champ Movement?.
Equally inescapable is the influence of political families ? rich and entrenched ? who continue to dominate a country in which 10 per cent of the population controls 90 per cent of the farmland.
The outgoing President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, is from such a family, as is the man most likely to replace her, Benigno Aquino III, best known ? like most Filipinos ? by his nickname: ?Noynoy?.
In some ways Mr Aquino is an unlikely candidate in a country susceptible to charisma. In 12 years as a senator and congressman he failed to sponsor a single law. Balding, stooped and badly dressed, he is a contrast to his more glamorous sisters ? Ballsy, Pinky, Viel and Kris. The last, a television personality, is described by one Philippines newspaper as ?the country?s version of Oprah Winfrey and Paris Hilton combined?.
The most significant thing about the siblings are their parents ? Benigno Aquino Sr, who was assassinated on Marcos?s orders, and his widow, Corazon ?Cory? Aquino, who led the ?People Power? uprising against him and became the Philippines? next democratic President.It was the emotional reaction to the beloved Mrs Aquino?s death from cancer last August that gave the hesitant Noynoy the impetus that he needed.
Pacquiao faces the scion of a less well-known, but locally powerful, family ? the Chiongbians, a shipping clan who have supplied local politicians for generations. PacMan?s last bid for Congress ended in defeat in 2007, and Roy Chiongbian, his current opponent, will also be a tough man to beat. For however great his global celebrity, in the Philippines, money and connections can overcome even sporting fame.
