Mayweather-McGregor aka Duterte-Trillanes
The impact whether as a true sports activity or as a joke that the Floyd Mayweather Jr., the boxer versus Connor McGregor, the mixed martial arts practitioner match had on society could also be viewed in the context of how our government leaders behave. I can draw, rather ironically, a similitude of that contest vis-à-vis a continuing conflict between two high officials of the country.
The Las Vegas spectacle was admittedly entertaining but it was actually a financial rip-off inflicted upon unsuspecting hordes of fun seeking sports fans. However, I do not really find joy in saying that the media war between President Rodrigo Roa Duterte and Senator Antonio Trillanes IV on their supposed huge though secret bank accounts is nothing different from the Mayweather-McGregor show but that is just how the parallelism appears to me.
To recall, the two sportsmen, despite their fame (or notoriety) never imagined squaring off either in a boxing ring or in the octagon. After all, one was already a retired pugilist. In a manner of speaking, they were not unlike a notorious military putchist and a famous former local chief executive, who, in our parallel view, are not supposed to clash head-on. But in the greedy perceptions of both the American boxer and the Irish MMA man, the promise of an unprecedented multi-million-dollar windfall from staging a cross-over fight was too much to ignore. The boxer and the MM artist salivated. They then put in their all too familiar antics to project the kind of fury the bout would become. When they finally signed a contract to fight under the rules of boxing, they kept us waiting for a slambang.
Notwithstanding his lack of boxing experience, McGregor boasted that Mayweather had never tasted his power. He, the mixed-martial artist, could knock out boxer. As we came to witness, Mayweather too out Heroded Herod.
In a parallel context, the senator mimicked the act of McGregor. The lawmaker did not have the kind of haymaker possessed by the Irish. Instead, his blows against the president would come in the form of an expose of hitherto unknown deposits accordingly owned by the president in several off-shore banks. Such secret bank accounts, in his mind, were graphic indicia of corruption and with such massive evidence of a corrupt leadership, he would cause the downfall of an otherwise very popular president.
Mayweather, rather the president, would not want to do a Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope. He was pumped up to slug it out with the senator using the very same weapon the legislator wielded. No gloves. Only bare knuckles. In his speech before Cagayan de Oro business people, Pres Duterte announced that he would, at a later time, divulged the foreign exchange accounts allegedly maintained by Sen Trillanes. The president's theory seemed to be that if dollars were kept by the lawmaker in offshore banks, that would unmask him as the corrupt one.
We, the Duterte-Trillanes constituents, are akin the hordes of Mayweather-McGregor unsuspecting fight fans. Unless this dollar drama gets cleared, and the leader who does not have any dollar deposit abroad is known, the attack and counter attack adds no meaning to the present entertainment. Indeed, until we know who between the president and the senator is innocent of the accusations aired, we have likely been ripped off by the guilty one. It is up to them to pursue to a logical end by showing to us the truth.
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