Former world champion boxer Manny Pacquiao will enter the Philippines’s May 2022 presidential election.
This is good news for Filipino sovereignty. After all, Pacquiao will face incumbent President Rodrigo Duterte in that election. And Duterte is a proud puppet for Communist China.
OK, technically that’s not true. The Filipino constitution limits a president to one term. However, rather than depart the presidential palace next year, Duterte has decided to play Putin. Just as the Russian president led Russia from the shadows as prime minister between 2008 and 2012, Rodrigo is set to have his eccentric daughter Sara serve as a figurehead president, with Rodrigo as Sara’s vice president.
Of course, it’s clear where the power in a second Duterte term will lie. With Rodrigo. Or, more accurately, with Xi Jinping.
While Duterte presents himself as the ultimate strongman against Filipino enemies, his strength only applies to unarmed drug users and journalists. When it comes to China’s seizure of the South China Sea and literal conquest of the Philippines’s exclusive economic area, Duterte the strongman disappears and Duterte the Chinese Communist prostitute rapidly appears in his place. That might sound like hyperbole, but the degree to which Duterte has sacrificed his nation’s sovereignty and security to dance at the feet of Xi Jinping is quite astonishing. The best example of Duterte’s bold if ignominious supplication is his turning of the Filipino Navy into a literal beach patrol.
Fortunately for his people, Pacquiao is willing to take off the gloves against China.
As Joel Gehrke reported in June, Pacquiao has attacked Duterte’s service of Beijing. Instead, Pacquiao says he would “stand strong in protecting our sovereign rights while pursuing a peaceful and diplomatic solution to the [South China Sea] dispute. I am a Filipino voicing out what needs to be said in defense of what has been adjudicated as rightfully ours.”
Well said. Hopefully, the true strongman will show the fake one for what he is.
