Fighting flares in southern Philippines

By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: December 26, 2008

MANILA: A series of rebel attacks this past week in the southern Philippines that left least nine civilians dead underscores the need for the government and Muslim separatists to resume peace negotiations, analysts said Friday.

While civilian casualties are not uncommon in the troubled region of Mindanao, some analysts view recent actions as the insurgents’ way of pressuring the government to restart the peace process that has been stalled since August, when the government nullified a landmark agreement that would have expanded a Muslim autonomous region.

On Tuesday, members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the main group that has been fighting for Muslim self-rule in the predominantly Roman Catholic region since the 1970s, attacked villages in Sultan Kudarat township, killing nine civilians and wounding more, the military said.

The next day, Christmas Eve, the rebels reportedly staged another attack, this time in the town of Alamada.

“The attacks came while the people were setting off firecrackers. The attackers timed their attacks during the revelry,” said Ernesto Concepcion, mayor of Alamada, according to ABS-CBN television.

The military said the rebels attacked other areas on Christmas Day, firing rocket-propelled grenades at power lines in Sultan Kudarat and looting.

“They ransacked the houses of civilians and extorted money from them. They even stole the guns of retired soldiers living in the area,” Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Torres Jr., an army spokesman, said Friday.

Officials of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front denied that its forces had tried to attack civilians. Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the front, instead blamed the military for stepping up its offensives in the past several days.

Julkipli Wadi, an analyst and professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of Philippines, said, “The recent attacks may be viewed as a strategic offensive” by the insurgents to pressure the government to restart the peace process.

However, Kristian Herbolzheimer, an adviser on peace processes with the Initiatives for International Dialogue, a Mindanao-based group that monitors the negotiations, said more information was needed.

“The fragility of any peace process is that it can easily be affected by episodes of violence that can either be a product of rogue elements who want to put pressure on the government or by spoilers who want it to derail completely,” he said. He urged a restoration of cease-fire monitors, with new authority to carry out “binding fact-finding missions” to determine the truth behind the attacks.

In recent months, fighting between separatists and the government has killed dozens from both sides and displaced more than half a million Filipinos from their homes, with tens of thousands in refugee camps in several provinces.

Negotiations broke down in August after the government rescinded the agreement that would have enlarged a Muslim autonomous region.

Many Filipinos, particularly Christian politicians and local officials, opposed the agreement, calling it a sellout of the Philippine patrimony. The issue went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the pact was unconstitutional.

Since then, the government has been trying to repair the situation. Last week, the government announced a new negotiating panel, in the hope that talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front could restart early next year.

But rebel leaders say any future negotiations will have to resume from where both sides left off – with the territorial agreement that was knocked down by the Supreme Court.

“Despite the Supreme Court’s declaration of the agreement as unconstitutional, the new government peace panel has no choice but to make the MOA-AD as a frame of reference for the new round of negotiations,” said Wadi, the University of the Philippines professor, using the acronym for the territorial agreement. If not, Wadi added, “there is no substantial peace agreement that can be expected.”

Herbolzheimer said both sides must work to overcome the profound mistrust that underlies the deadlock. He said opposition to the territorial agreement has “severely affected the trust of many Moros” – a term for Filipino Muslims – “in the existing institutions of the Philippines.”

“At the same time,” he added, “the majority of the non-Moro public opinion remains with strong prejudices against Muslims.”

Communists mark 40 years

The Communist Party of the Philippines, which leads one of the longest Communist insurgencies in the world, marked its 40th anniversary Friday by making public a five-year plan that it said should advance its aim of establishing a Marxist state, Carlos H. Conde reported from Manila.

It said that under the plan, government and military officials who committed “treason, plunder and human rights violations” would be subjected to what it called “revolutionary justice.” It also said that it intended to establish rebel forces in each of the country’s 168 congressional districts.

But some say the Communist movement, whose armed wing, the New People’s Army, is down to only 5,000 regular combatants compared with more than 10,000 two decades ago, is too weak to carry out such a plan.

“I don’t see where they would get the wherewithal to do something like this,” said Scott Harrison, managing director of Pacific Strategies and Assessments, a risk consultancy group.

Generation left behind by Filipino migrant workers

By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: December 23, 2008

MANILA: Dolores Gerong’s one wish this Christmas is to be back in the Philippines with her three children.

She is driven by more than holiday sentiment. Nearly two years ago, she left her country to work as a maid in Hong Kong, becoming one of the millions of Filipino migrant workers scattered around the globe.

The three teenage daughters she left behind need her, she says. Her husband cannot help: He has been working as a driver in Saudi Arabia for the past 14 years.

“I’m worried each time my sister, who lives with them, tells me they often stay out late at night, spending money that I worked hard to earn on frivolous things, and not performing as well as they used to in school,” Gerong, 35, said by telephone from Hong Kong. “I need a serious talk with my children.”

Gerong’s anguish is a familiar refrain in the Philippines, where nearly nine million people – 10 percent of the country’s population – have left to take jobs overseas. These industrious migrants are willing to endure separation, sometimes for years at a time, to help support families back home.

Their contribution is also appreciated by their government. Migrants’ remittances, valued by the World Bank at $17 billion last year, are credited for keeping the fragile Philippine economy afloat. In recognition of their value, the government has stepped up vocational training and other programs to enhance Filipino workers’ attractiveness on the global market. Concerns have been voiced over how the current financial crisis could affect overseas employment.

But questions are increasingly being raised about the social costs of this heavy dependence on absent workers, especially now that the majority are women, most of whom are mothers who have left their children behind.

According to several recent studies, the “feminization of migration” is exacting a steep toll.

Filipino men have long gone abroad for jobs, mainly in construction and seafaring. But in the past two decades the ever-rising demand in the developed world for English-speaking caretakers – nurses, nannies and domestic servants – has opened the door wide for Filipino women. They are now found in great numbers in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Southeast Asia, notably Hong Kong and Singapore.

They are increasingly less likely to be found back home in the Philippines, caring for their own families. An estimated six million Philippine children are growing up now with at least one parent absent because of migration.

That the absent parent is now usually the mother has resulted in “displacement, disruptions and changes in care-giving arrangements,” Vanessa Tobin, deputy director for programs at Unicef, said at a conference on migration in Manila in September.

Adolescents seem especially hard hit. A study released this year by the non-profit Asia-Pacific Policy Center in Manila indicated that children between 13 and 16 are the most affected, with many dropping out of school, experimenting with drugs or getting pregnant.

Indeed, one of Gerong’s great concerns now is that her eldest daughter has a boyfriend. “It upsets me that I am not there to see her through this,” she said.

Rosemarie Edillon, executive director of the Asia-Pacific Policy Center, said, “It is worrisome that children in this age group, which requires the most adult attention, are actually the ones being neglected.”

In its study of 120 households in several villages in the northern province of Ilocos Norte, the group’s researchers found that children with at least one migrant parent had a higher incidence of common health problems like ear infections or scabies.

“You would expect that they would have the money to buy medicines, but there’s only so much a grandmother can do,” Edillon said. Many children of migrants are left in the care of a grandparent or other relatives.

Rebecca Lucero, who left her three-month-old son behind 18 years ago to work at a Holiday Inn in Dubai, decided to go home to the Philippines for good in 2000, when the boy was 10. It was a decision that Lucero said nearly erased the guilt she had felt when she left Patrick in her mother’s care. (Her husband, Rodrigo, is still working in a hotel in Dubai.)

“I am really glad I returned just when Patrick was entering his teen years,” Lucero said. “Now, I can watch him grow up and guide him. I have been playing catch-up since I returned, but it is all worth it.”

In Lucero’s neighborhood, where 75 percent of the more than 1,000 households have at least one parent working abroad, steps are being taken to address the impact of migration on children.

Few work harder at this than Nimfa Melegrito, who runs Sammaka – a Tagalog-language acronym for the Organization of Migrant Workers and Their Families – from her home in a slum area of Quezon City.

Melegrito, 62, is herself a former migrant worker – she spent 10 years as a dressmaker in Saudi Arabia – and feels that her family paid a price for her absence. Although she was able to send money back, she was less involved in the lives of her children, none of whom finished college as she had hoped. Melegrito is convinced that “things would have been different had I been around to care for them.”

Melegrito and her organization are trying to help migrants’ families cope with their many problems. “Teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, poor grades – name it, and we’ve faced it,” she said.

They have been cooperating with groups like the private, nonprofit Kanlungan Center for Migrant Workers to provide counseling and other support services to these families. A top goal is to provide training and placement for better-paying jobs in the Philippines, to wean migrants’ families from their heavy dependence on remittances from migrant relatives, Melegrito said.

Her group has also enlisted the participation of migrants’ teenage children. One of them is Rommel Miñoza, 14, who has been living with his grandmother since he was 2 while his mother works as a beautician in Saudi Arabia.

“He’s a good child, and he knows the sacrifices his mother has made just to send home a few hundred dollars a month,” said the grandmother, Inocencia Miñoza.

Rommel tends to break down in tears whenever his mother is mentioned. “Even though we constantly communicate through the cellphone, I miss her,” Rommel said.

The boy said he honors his mother every time he participates in a project for Melegrito’s group, which has been arranging gatherings so these children can socialize. Sometimes, Melegrito’s group brings in students from exclusive private schools in the Manila area to coach the migrants’ children with their studies and help them to overcome their isolation.

“We need this kind of community support, so these children do not feel abandoned at the very least,” Melegrito said.

Scholars like Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis, have long advocated the need for the larger community to take a more active role in addressing the impact of migration.

Although Filipinos are known for their extended families – according to Unicef, 63 percent of families with a mother working abroad have a grandparent or other relatives living with them – Parreñas thinks Philippine society has not done enough to recognize the special circumstances of the migrants’ families with their missing parents.

“‘Family Values’ courses in school do not mention such families, but instead textbooks insist on normalizing the nuclear family with a father and mother and children living together,” Parreñas wrote in an e-mail message.

The Philippines, she added, “faces the challenge of adjusting to its changing family forms and accordingly recognize the experiences and welfare of kids with migrant parents, so they do not feel like the ‘oddball’ in society.”

Islamic group admits to child soldiers

By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: December 21, 2008

MANILA: The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a separatist group in the Philippines, has given its commitment to the United Nations that it would stop recruiting children into its ranks and remove those already in the armed movement from conflict.

The group made the promise to Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN secretary general’s special representative on children and armed conflict, during a recent visit to the southern Philippines, where the Muslims have been fighting for self-determination for decades.

If the front succeeded in its promise, the United Nations might be able to remove it from its list of armed groups worldwide that recruit and use children, Coomaraswamy said in an interview.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front had long denied that it had children among its fighters, but the Philippine military disclosed in September that the group had been recruiting and training young Muslims to become, as one of the rebel documents was alleged to say, “tough, self-reliant fighting men.”

The military released a video showing children participating in military drills in what the authorities claimed was a camp maintained by the group.

Since then, the rebel group has been hard-pressed to contain the fallout from the video, with many in the Philippines denouncing it. Some critics said it had seriously undermined its cause, with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo promising to raise the issue of child soldiers to the United Nations.

“The Moro Islamic Liberation Front had given its commitment,” Coomaraswamy said. The group admitted that it had children in its ranks, she said, and the front had promised her that it would “release them, to move them away from the conflict zone.”

Coomaraswamy said a UN team would soon meet with the group to hammer out an action plan in order to carry out its commitment. “If they implement this over the course of next year, then by 2010 we will be able to delist them,” Coomaraswamy said, referring to the UN list of groups with child combatants.

A Unicef-commissioned study released late last year said that the front, as well as the Communist New People’s Army, did not coerce children into joining these movements. The researchers found “indications that children volunteer to help the groups as their parents willingly give their consent.”

The study quoted a Muslim boy named Amin who joined the front when he was 16, after some family members were killed during military operations.

“No one forced me to take up arms. I did it to defend what’s left of my family, especially because of what happened,” he said, according to the study.

Apart from the Islamic front and the Communist rebels, the government’s own paramilitary force, known as Cafgu, has been accused of recruiting minors to fight the insurgents.

Ferry capsizes in the Philippines, killing at least 23

By Carlos H. Conde
Published: December 15, 2008
International Herald Tribune

MANILA: At least 23 people died and an additional 33 were missing after an overloaded passenger ferry capsized off a northern Philippine province, the coast guard said Monday.

The authorities said they had recovered 23 victims who had drowned after huge waves overturned the Maejan, an interisland ferry carrying 102 passengers, just 50 meters, or 165 feet, off the shoreline of Cagayan Province north of Manila on Sunday morning. Most of the survivors managed to swim to shore.

Officials said the area of the tragedy is known for its big waves and strong current. The Associated Press quoted Joseph Llopis, the mayor of Calayan Island, the origin of the ferry, as saying that hours before the ferry capsized, “three children fell into the sea as the vessel was lashed by huge waves.” One of the dead was a 1-year-old child.

Llopis said many of the victims were traveling to the mainland to buy food for Christmas. “There’ll be no festive mood. Many of the dead were breadwinners,” Llopis said, according to The Associated Press.

The coast guard, in a statement, said the Maejan was buffeted by “big waves and strong current until it was dragged and capsized.” The local police said that the ferry was entering the mouth of the Cagayan River when it capsized. Rescue boats and small planes had been dispatched to look for survivors.

Vice Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo, chief of the Philippine Coast Guard, said the Maejan was authorized to carry only 50 passengers and that, according to him, criminal charges would be filed against its owners for overloading the ferry.

Accidents at sea are common in the Philippines, particularly toward the end of the year, when the monsoon season peaks.

Last month, a passenger ferry capsized in the central Philippines after being struck by strong winds. More than 40 people were killed.

In June, the Princess of the Stars, a passenger ship with 850 passengers and crew, sank in the central Philippines after being lashed by Typhoon Fengshen. Only 57 people survived; the authorities are still trying to recover bodies.

The world’s worst sea disaster since World War II occurred also in the central Philippines, in December 1987, when the passenger ship Dona Paz collided with an oil tanker, killing more than 4,300 people.

Apart from negligence and the unsafe state of many passenger vessels, storms and typhoons play a crucial role in these tragedies. About 20 storms and typhoons batter the Philippines every year.

On Monday, officials said a tropical storm was nearing the country and threatens to turn into a typhoon in the following days.

These sailors embrace risk for reward

By Carlos H. Conde
Published: December 9, 2008
International Herald Tribune

MANILA: Under the shade of the tall trees that line the sidewalk at Rizal Park, Marlon Arguelles scanned the job notices posted on the recruiting booths, a jumble of laser printouts marked with huge U.S. dollar signs.

Rizal, just off Manila Bay, is where Filipino sailors go seeking the best job offers, and where recruiters bid for the best sailors. On any given day, between 700 and 1,000 Filipino men try their luck in this sailors’ market.

There has always been an element of risk in the seafaring life, but these days, with piracy resurgent off the Horn of Africa, the dangers have seldom been more glaring. Nevertheless, in the Philippines, whose citizens make up nearly a third of the world’s commercial sailors, economic considerations trump concerns for personal safety. Recruiters say they’ve seen little falloff in demand for jobs on even the most dangerous routes.

Arguelles, 28, was looking for a job as a ship’s cook. Many of the agencies were offering between $1,000 and $2,000 a month for the position. But he said he needed more money than that to help care for his mother, who suffers from hypertension.

And so he was interested when he heard that one recruiter was looking for crewmen for an oil tanker that would pass through the Gulf of Aden. According to the International Maritime Bureau, 63 of the 199 incidents of piracy or attempted piracy that were reported worldwide from January to September occurred in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia.

“I know it’s dangerous but the agency is offering twice the salary,” said Arguelles, who sometimes helps out in his parents’ shop back home in Quezon, in the northern Philippines. “Besides, think about it: the pirates haven’t killed any crew members so far, so it could be harmless.”

Indeed, according to reports of some Filipino sailors who were freed late last month by Somali pirates, it could even be fun. The all-Filipino crew of the Greek-owned tanker Centauri, which was hijacked in September, told news agencies that the pirates treated them well, even playing cards with them and sharing meals.

Arguelles was in the park less than 15 minutes before a man in a white nautical uniform, carrying a sign advertising jobs, sidled up to him and spoke a few words. Arguelles nodded and, with a broad smile, walked away with the recruiter.

In late November, 134 of about 300 sailors held captive by Somali pirates were Filipinos, according to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. Twenty-six of them were from the Centauri. The other 108, taken captive while aboard a total of seven ships, are still in the hands of the pirates.

While some legislators in the Philippines have called for restrictions on the maritime recruiting market, Salvador Santos, assistant general manager of the Luneta Seafarer’s Center, a private organization that offers counseling and other assistance to sailors and is located next to the recruiting booths, said he did not think the men were being exploited.

“It’s up to the sailor whether to accept the offer,” Santos said. “The important thing is he knows what he’s getting into.”

News reports of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden apparently had not deterred sailors from seeking jobs on oil tankers and other commercial ships.

“We haven’t seen any change in the number of people who come here,” Santos said. “On the contrary, perhaps because of what is happening in Somalia, we’ve heard that more sailors are seeking to be deployed there because the money is good.”

A sailor who boards a ship bound for Somali waters gets double pay plus hazard pay, Santos said. That could mean more than $3,000 a month for a cook, more than a minimum wage-earner in the Philippines would make in a year.

What compels sailors like Arguelles to sign up despite the risk is not thrill-seeking or adventure, but the same motive that drives so many Filipinos to seek employment overseas: the responsibility of caring for families back home, Santos said. In the case of Arguelles, he hopes to cover not just his mother’s medical expenses, but his three younger siblings’ education.

Arguelles said he had always wanted to be a teacher, but teaching is one of the lowest-paid jobs in the Philippines.

“One hundred thousand pesos,” or about $2,000 – roughly the monthly wage on a non-Somalia bound ship – “is a lot of money for a single man like me,” Arguelles explained. “But I didn’t become a sailor because I wanted to sail. It’s because that’s what would provide us the money and it’s what many of my relatives have been doing.”

Amid the global economic crisis, the government continues to pin its hopes on the more than eight million overseas Philippine workers who send back remittances equivalent to 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration says that 30 percent of the world’s merchant sailors, about 270,000, are Filipinos. They are likely to continue to find themselves in pirate-threatened waters for some time to come.

“The Philippine government is doing its best to protect its sailors, whom we consider heroes,” said Crescente Relacion, executive director of the Office of Migrant Workers Affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs. “We are in constant communication with the ship owners, with foreign authorities and with the families of the sailors who remain in captivity.”

Santos, of the Luneta Seafarer’s Center, said it should not surprise anyone that Filipino sailors are enthusiastic about sailing despite the dangers.

“Given how hard it is to find a job in the Philippines that pays as much as a sailor would get abroad, I think it’s not surprising that sailors would take some risks,” he said.

Santos noted that Filipino workers have even smuggled themselves into war-torn Iraq because of the high pay offered there.

“About the only thing we can do,” Santos added, “is make sure that the sailor’s needs are met and he is equipped with all the knowledge and information he must know before he embarks on a dangerous assignment.”

Troops and separatists clash in southern Philippines

By Carlos H. Conde
Published: December 8, 2008
International Herald Tribune

MANILA: As many as five marines and five Muslim separatist rebels were killed during intense fighting in the southern Philippines, military officials said Monday. They said an undetermined number of government troops and rebels were also wounded.

The fighting began Sunday and continued Monday morning in the two Muslim-dominated provinces of Sulu and Basian, islands that the government had earlier declared to be free from terrorists and Islamic extremists after a U.S.-supported counterterrorism campaign that began in 2002.

Officials said Monday that the number of those killed could sharply increase, particularly on the side of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Muslim separatist group.

“We are now on a defensive stance,” said an army spokeswoman, Lieutenant Steffani Cacho. She said the government was mainly going after members of the Abu Sayyaf and “rogue elements” of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the separatist group. She said a recent spate of kidnappings in the region prompted the military operation.

Cacho said that the marines were killed in a firefight in the town of Al-Barka in Basilan Province, a former stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf. In July last year, 14 marines were also killed in the same town after a firefight, 10 of whom were beheaded.
Cacho said the rebels had sought cover in some of the villages. It was not clear whether those wounded, estimated to be more than 50, were mainly rebels or included villagers.

But Mohagher Iqbal, the front’s chief negotiator, said the offensives aimed at the separatists, not the Abu Sayyaf.

“The military is making it more difficult for the peace process to continue,” he said. He criticized what he called a “devious campaign” to link the front with the Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group notorious for kidnapping and beheading its victims.

Peace talks collapsed two months ago after the government backed out of an agreement to provide the Muslim rebels with their own territory. The Philippine Supreme Court later ruled that the agreement was unconstitutional.

Since then, fighting has been occurring between the front and the military, displacing more than 300,000 Filipinos from their homes. This prompted third-party observers to appeal to both sides to resume negotiations.

“An immediate cessation of the hostilities is of the utmost urgency, not only to re-launch the peace process, but to allow relief efforts and rehabilitation” of the refugees, the Organization of the Islamic Conference said last week.

The military had earlier said that it would not stop with the offensive.

“Our objective is clear: to get them, specifically their leaders,” Lieutenant Colonel Ernesteo Torres, an army spokesman, said last month, referring to the Abu Sayyaf and the Islamic front.

Despite efforts to flush the Abu Sayyaf from the southern Philippines, it continues to remain the country’s biggest terrorism threat. Last month, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had to cancel a trip to the south after the terrorists shot at a convoy of vehicles with American soldiers on it.

U.S. troops have been stationed in the region since 2002, helping in humanitarian programs and in counterterrorism training for Philippine soldiers.

Philippines crawls to halt to cheer Manny Pacquiao, boxing hero

By Carlos H. Conde
Published: December 7, 2008
International Herald Tribune

MANILA: In cities and towns across the Philippines, traffic was practically nonexistent Sunday. The crime rate was zero in Manila and other major urban centers, the police said. And days before, the military had announced it would not be opening any offensives against enemies of the state for a day, while Muslim insurgents responded by promising not to attack.

The event that brought everyday life in this deeply Catholic country to a Good Friday-like standstill was the historic matchup in Las Vegas between Manny Pacquiao, pound-for-pound the world’s best boxer, and the Mexican-American boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya.

Filipinos were glued to their television sets as Pacquiao claimed victory over De La Hoya. Restaurants and movie theaters were filled with mostly poor Filipinos, cheering Pacquiao and taunting his opponent, while pedicab and bus drivers stopped plying their routes, to the consternation of some commuters.

“We don’t get to do this often, so you understand the excitement,” said Erasmo Baltazar, a 52-year-old bus driver who decided not to show up for work Sunday. “Besides,” he added, taking a swig of his beer inside a roadside restaurant, “I never miss a fight by Manny.”

In many army camps, televisions have been set up for soldiers, whom the popular Pacquiao has always made sure to visit. “The soldiers relate to him because his life is an inspiration to us all,” said Major Gerardo Zamudio, an air force spokesman.

Pacquiao, 29, is considered the greatest sports hero this country has ever had. He is dubbed the “people’s champ,” earning as well the moniker “the national fists.”

His victory over De La Hoya, who surrendered after the eighth round of a 12-round fight, cemented his legendary status, which had been buttressed by his humble beginnings (he dropped out of school when he was 12, sold cigarettes in the streets and turned to boxing in order to survive) as well as his reputation for generosity (he reportedly spent $700,000 for tickets to the match that he gave out to friends and relatives).

To many Filipinos, Pacquiao is the embodiment of a dream fulfilled. Across the country, boxing stables are filled with young men who had run away from their homes in the provinces in order to train to be boxers – many of them hoping to emulate Pacquiao. He has almost single-handedly made boxing the national sport in what used to be a basketball-crazy nation.

“Manny lives up to his billing. He is truly the people’s champ,” said John Nery, a writer who has written profiles of the boxer. “But I think he is also teaching his millions of fans a valuable life lesson. Talent, even of world-class quality, is not enough. You need discipline.”

Prior to the match, Pacquiao had been deemed the underdog against the heavier, taller and more experienced De La Hoya. But his training and preparation bordered on the obsessive, many sportswriters had said, with reports depicting him as a hungry boxer determined to prove his nonbelievers wrong.

Apart from being a source of inspiration to many young Filipinos, Pacquiao’s fights have a way of deflecting attention from the country’s troubles. For instance, the news that 16 people had been killed Saturday in the worst cops-and-robbers shootout in recent years – including a man and his young daughter who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – was eclipsed by stories on Pacquiao. “Time to make history” went the lead Sunday headline of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the country’s largest.