MANILA: Shrugging off his low rating in opinion polls, Philippine politician and former boxing star Manny Pacquiao says his impoverished roots make him the best person to be president, as he warned voters to avoid corruption-tainted candidates.
Pacquiao questioned why people supported Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the current frontrunner for the May 9 vote, pointing to the plundering of the country’s wealth during the harsh authoritarian rule of his late father and namesake.
“The root cause of our country’s problem is corruption and then we would vote for a candidate who has been tainted by corruption? What happened to us as a nation? Where is our intelligence?” Pacquiao said in an interview with Reuters late on Thursday.
Pacquiao is trailing in fourth place on 6 percent in the latest opinion poll, well behind Marcos, who is leading with 56 percent.
The incumbent senator has made fighting corruption a centerpiece of his campaign, vowing to strengthen efforts to recover billions of dollars missing since the fall of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, as part his anti-graft platform.
Marcos’s family was accused of plundering an estimated $10 billion during his late father’s two-decade rule, spending it on jewelry, real estate and artworks including those of Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet.
“Why are we in poverty? Because we don’t have money? Wrong. Because of corruption,” Pacquiao said at his campaign headquarters.
Marcos’s camp did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the candidate has previously said he cannot apologize for what his father did.
Pacquiao has also sparred with incumbent President Rodrigo Duterte over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. He said he would not be bullied by China if he won the presidency.
“I dare you, bother the Filipino fishermen and I’m the one you would have to face,” Pacquiao said in comments addressed at China. “To be bullied is not in my vocabulary.”
China reiterates its claims of sovereignty in the disputed waterway whenever Manila complains about its actions toward Filipino fishermen.
Duterte has faced criticism for not confronting China more over the conduct of its military, coast guard and fishing fleet in waters around the archipelago, arguing it was pointless since Manila was no match for Beijing’s military might.
If need be, Pacquiao vowed to deploy navy ships in the disputed waters to protect his country’s fishermen and said he valued his country’s relationship with the United States, which he called as “our best friend.”
The only man to hold boxing world titles in eight different divisions, Pacquiao retired from boxing in September after the sport brought him huge riches to propel him from humble beginnings as a dirt-poor youngster doing odd jobs to survive.
Pacquiao said he was unfazed by his low rating in polls, convinced the poor would deliver the votes for him on election day.
His impoverished beginnings made him the best person to take on the presidency, because he understood what it was like to be poor, he said.
“If we are going to discuss poverty, that is not a concept for Manny Pacquiao. I felt and lived that and that is why I want to lift the people out of poverty,” he said.
Philippines’ Pacquiao says he is not to be counted out of presidential race
https://arab.news/gaf8d
Philippines’ Pacquiao says he is not to be counted out of presidential race
- Pacquiao questions why people support Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the frontrunner for the May 9 vote
- Boxer-turned-senator is trailing in fourth place on 6 percent in the latest opinion poll
Nigeria signals more strikes likely in ‘joint’ US operations
- Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country
LAGOS: Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country.
The west African country faces multiple interlinked security crises in its north, where jihadists have been waging an insurgency in the northeast since 2009 and armed “bandit” gangs raid villages and stage kidnappings in the northwest.
The US strikes come after Abuja and Washington were locked in a diplomatic dispute over what Trump characterised as the mass killing of Christians amid Nigeria’s myriad armed conflicts.
Washington’s framing of the violence as amounting to Christian “persecution” is rejected by the Nigerian government and independent analysts, but has nonetheless resulted in increased security coordination.
“It’s Nigeria that provided the intelligence,” the country’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, told broadcaster Channels TV, saying he was on the phone with US State Secretary Marco Rubio ahead of the bombardment.
Asked if there would be more strikes, Tuggar said: “It is an ongoing thing, and we are working with the US. We are working with other countries as well.”
Targets unclear
The Department of Defense’s US Africa Command, using an acronym for the Daesh group, said “multiple Daesh terrorists” were killed in an attack in the northwestern state of Sokoto.
US defense officials later posted video of what appeared to be the nighttime launch of a missile from the deck of a battleship flying the US flag.
Which of Nigeria’s myriad armed groups were targeted remains unclear.
Nigeria’s jihadist groups are mostly concentrated in the northeast of the country, but have made inroads into the northwest.
Researchers have recently linked some members from an armed group known as Lakurawa — the main jihadist group located in Sokoto State — to Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which is mostly active in neighboring Niger and Mali.
Other analysts have disputed those links, though research on Lakurawa is complicated as the term has been used to describe various armed fighters in the northwest.
Those described as Lakurawa also reportedly have links to Al-Qaeda affiliated group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a rival group to ISSP.
While Abuja has welcomed the strikes, “I think Trump would not have accepted a ‘No’ from Nigeria,” said Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher for Good Governance Africa, an NGO.
Amid the diplomatic pressure, Nigerian authorities are keen to be seen as cooperating with the US, Samuel told AFP, even though “both the perpetrators and the victims in the northwest are overwhelmingly Muslim.”
Tuggar said that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu “gave the go-ahead” for the strikes.
The foreign minister added: “It must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other.”
