This time, Pacquiao for senator

By Al S. Mendoza

 

WHAT’S Manny Pacquiao up to?

Now, he wants to be a senator.

After having just grabbed the enviable position of head basketball coach of Kia Motors, Pacquiao would next want to grab a seat in the Senate.

He sees that dream happening in the 2016 election.

“I am running for senator,” Pacquiao said in Tagalog on Wednesday.  “That’s in 2016, the year I will retire from boxing.”

He said he had accepted Jojo Binay’s offer to join the senatorial ticket under Binay’s UNA party.

Binay himself had already declared his intention to run for president in May 2016.

President Aquino, elected in 2010, has yet to name his bet for 2016.

But as the figurehead of the Liberal Party, Aquino has the inside track on who would be Binay’s foe in 2016.

Mar Roxas has always been touted to be P-Noy’s candidate.

Roxas lost the vice presidential race to Binay in 2010 after having led for more than three-fourths of the way.

If it were basketball, Binay made a tremendous rally in the last two minutes to eke out the dramatic win.

It was mainly through that stunning triumph that has spurred Binay to gun for the highest post of the land.

And Pacquiao, seemingly sold that Binay would be the man to beat in 2016, has cast his lot on the man they call the Black Superman from Makati.

At first, Pacquiao had appeared headed to P-Noy’s team.

But after tax talks he had with P-Noy at Malacanang a while back bogged down, Pacquiao would soon slowly distance himself away from the President.

Thus, Pacquiao’s alleged billion-peso tax deficit has remained unresolved even as Pacman continues to wage battle in court against the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

It could be a protracted struggle for the simple reason that Pacquiao, a certified billionaire, has the wherewithal to employ noted legal eagles to handle his case.

If it should drag all the way to 2016, so much the better for Pacquiao, right?

He might just win as senator, who knows?

And, in the event that Binay should win, too, wouldn’t Pacquiao’s tax woes be restructured to his advantage, too?

In this country, nothing is impossible.

And isn’t politics the art of the possible?

So, don’t laugh because Pacquiao is aiming for the Senate.

We laughed when he first ran for Congress in 2007.  He lost, yes, but only because his men brazenly stole his campaign money.

Wiser the second time around, he won on his second attempt in 2010—and we stopped laughing.

Even if he’d retire as an ex-champ two years from now, Pacquiao will still be a formidable senatorial bet in 2016.

You know how our political masa behave:  They go for the popular—a perennial champ.  Always.

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