Acoustics

There were many paths Manny Pacquiao could have taken to convince the public of his worthiness to be president. He chose the worst one.

He could have, for instance, traveled the across the country to hear out civic groups and people’s organizations to get a fuller grasp of the problems confronting the grassroots communities. He could have convened business and political blocs to build a vision of the country’s post-pandemic future. Or, he could have chosen a string of policy issues and proposed alternatives – such as junking that stupid Agri-Agra Law that hemmed in our banks without contributing to agricultural modernization.

All these alternative paths would have required cautious momentum building until the time was right to launch a formal presidential bid.

But none of these alternative paths conform to Pacquiao’s temperament and disposition. The boxing icon is classic AD-HD. He has a short attention span and finds pleasure in doing too many things all at once.

While still active in boxing, he set up a basketball league and insisted he be playing coach of the team he owned. The team did not prosper to greatness and Pacquiao’s basketball skills leave much to be desired.

He once fell in love with billiards and challenged the living icons of the game, putting in huge bets against vastly superior talents. He must have lost quite a sum.

He had a brief romance with golf, although he did not have the mental discipline to learn the fundamentals of this precise sport – nor did he have the patience to do the full round of 18 holes. He muscled his shots and never, on record, completed a round. He missed the fact that, after one’s teens, the joy of golf is to be found in the cheerful banter than happens in between strokes and the sheer timelessness of walking the course.

Leveraging his popularity, he got himself elected legislator. But he did not have the aptitude to patiently study legislative proposals. His tenure as a legislator is better remembered for his absenteeism than for any perfected law.

The path Pacquiao chose to take in the lead-up to announcing his candidacy is the most predictable and least fruitful. It is a variant of the “kick-the-rascals-out” strategy: demonize the incumbent and present one as the crusading alternative.

Pacquiao’s first problem with choosing this path is that Leni Robredo was there first. For years now, Leni has been sustaining white noise in the background, criticizing this or that policy decision, without elaborating on an alternative policy path. That is the luxury of the opposition. They do not have to make the hard decisions at the end of the day.

Leni, of course, was never as audacious as Manny – who made the totally unsupported claim that corruption was thrice as bad during the Duterte years. Until she resurfaced recently, Leni was last heard giving unwanted advice about how Davao City may better handle its COVID-19 infection problem. The feisty mayor of Davao did not miss a beat, asking the Vice President to shut up about things she knows nothing about.

Pacquiao’s second problem with the path he chose is that he has been behaving as a loyal ally of the administration for the last 5 years. If he knew something, he must have said something. He did not – until a few weeks ago when his grip on the PDP-Laban came under extreme doubt.

The dissonance between what he used to say and what he now claims jars the voter.

Candidates who pull the sort of stunt Pacquiao now indulges in do so to win name recall. Everybody knows Pacquiao. Name recall is the least of his problems. His most salient concern should be credibility.

Which brings us to the third problem with this path he chose.

He has gone into a rampage of wild accusations against some of our most credible public agencies. Anyone who does this must have fully documented charges in hand. The burden of proof is always on the accuser.

Pacquiao has none. When the boxer first began railing about corruption, President Duterte asked him for proof. In response, he called for a press conference from behind a desk filled with stacks of documents as props. But his mumblings made little sense.

The boxer claimed a payments service hired to help distribute the direct subsidies was ill suited for the job. Then he quoted a figure of P10.4 billion as having been lost. This amount is probably the total of subsidies coursed through the payments system. That was not lost.

The correct thing to do was to question the service contract. But that involved a much smaller amount. Besides, the contract has expired and the subsidies, it appears, have been delivered.

Then, Pacquiao accused the PNP of anomaly in the purchase of body cameras for the force. But he gives us no details about the bidding process, no indication the equipment was overpriced and no evidence the bidding was less than competitive.

He raised questions about the DOH’s procurement but was never clear about which specific instance he was questioning. The DOH did indeed make numerous purchases of medical equipment – because we were in the midst of a pandemic. A Senate hearing was conducted on these purchases, basically clearing our health officials. Pacquiao was not paying attention when this happened.

The danger in this acoustic campaign launched by the ambitious boxer is that it unfairly maligns much of the bureaucracy. Pacquiao could reap backlash from this careless strategy of making unfounded accusations.