Boxer Touted As solution to conflicts in Philippines

BUOYED BY THE LATEST VICTORY OF ITS MOST FAMOUS RESERVIST PERSONNEL, THE PHILIPPINE ARMY IS EYEING A NEW ROLE FOR EIGHT-TIME WORLD BOXING CHAMP MANNY ‘PACMAN’ PACQUIAO AS A PEACE NEGOTIATOR.
Pacquiao, who won a three-year term as representative of Saranggani province last May, has been promoted through the years to Army senior master sergeant, the highest rank for enlisted personnel.
“The Philippine Army joins proud Filipinos here and all over the world in congratulating Master Sergeant Manny Pacquiao for this extraordinary feat of winning an eighth world title,” the Army spokesman, Col. Antonio Parlade Jr., said within hours of Pacquiao’s conquest of Mexican Antonio Margarito.
“As soon as he is back, we will recommend that he sit in the peace panel to help unite this country,” Parlade said.’
The Aquino government is negotiating peace on two fronts -- with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The New People’s Army is the military wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and has been in existence for more than 30 years.
The group, based on the island of Mindanao, has an estimated 10,000 members according to a presidential adviser on the peace process, according to a BBC report on the conflict.
Peace talks between the CPP and the Philippine Government stalled in June 2001, after the NPA admitted killing a Filipino congressman.
The CPP/NPA was added to Washington’sand Ottawa’s  list of foreign “terrorist” organisations in August 2002.
Shortly afterwards, at a request from the Americans, the Dutch Government cancelled benefit payments to group members living in the Netherlands.
Many of the NPA’s senior figures, including its founder Jose Maria Sison, live in self-imposed exile in the Netherlands, and direct operations from there.
Unlike the Americans, the Philippine Government does not class the Maoist group as a terrorism organisation.
In February 2004 a peace process was revived, with representatives of the NPA meeting government officials in the Norwegian capital Oslo.
The two sides agreed a series of measures to move towards a formal peace deal.
These included setting up a joint commission to examine human rights abuses on both sides, and working together for the removal of the NPA from the US and EU’s list of terrorist organisations.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front is a more militant rebel group, which split from the Moro National Libertaion Front in 1977.
The MILF has a long-term aim of creating a separate Islamic state in the southern Philippines, but analysts say the group may well settle for a certain degree of Muslim autonomy.
The MILF puts more emphasis on its Islamic roots than the MNLF. Many of its senior figures are clerics.
Based in central Mindanao, the MILF has broad popular support in rural areas, where the lack of economic development has encouraged dissent.
The 12,500-strong group was subject to a crackdown in 2000 under the army of then-president Joseph Estrada.
Talks between Manila and the rebels were revived, although they stumbled to a halt a couple of years later when the group was accused of harbouring a gang accused of kidnapping foreigners.
One factor which is complicating this process is the allegation that MILF has links with foreign terrorists - including Jemaah Islamiah, the South East Asian group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings. The MILF denies the claims.
Despite the truce, skirmishes continue between troops and MILF militants.
Meanwhile, as the Philippines celebrated the latest victory of its favorite son, soldiers, slum dwellers and farmers hailed him as the greatest boxer ever.
Pacquiao’s pummelling of Antonio Margarito in Texas to capture the WBC super welterweight title caused a familiar upsurge in pride for the impoverished Southeast Asian nation’s 94 million people.
“Pacquiao is the greatest boxer ever,” said Aliudin Sumael, 43, a Muslim farmer who rushed to a cultural center in the strife-torn southern province of Maguindanao to watch the bout.
“I hope he can share his millions with us poor Muslims.”
Pacquiao’s rise from poverty to the top of world boxing has been one of the few enduring success stories in the Philippines over recent years, as society has struggled with grinding poverty, corruption and natural disasters.
The 31-year-old’s sporting success helped him launch a successful political career and he was elected a congressman of the desperately poor southern province of Sarangani in national elections in May.
As has become tradition in the Philippines, soldiers fighting a long-running Muslim insurgency in the south put down their weapons on Sunday to watch their idol and expressed fleeting hopes of reconciliation.
“During the fight itself, the soldiers and the whole Filipino nation regardless of ideology, will be one, cheering for our Filipino hero,” military spokesman Brigadier General Jose Mabanta told AFP before the bout.
“We can probably say that at least during that time, we will be united.”
“He is really somebody that we can look up to and can be proud of. Every time he has a fight everybody unites,” said Ben Articulo, 52, a barbecue stand operator in Manila.
As with past Pacquiao bouts, the crime rate dropped to practically zero as criminals were also busy watching the fight, said police spokesman Senior Superintendent Agrimero Cruz in a statement.
Government radio reported that even Philippine President Benigno Aquino, who was attending an Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit in Japan, managed to catch the fight.
As the meeting ended, Aquino rushed to his hotel to see the bout in a special operations center set up by his security detail, where he cheered and applauded beside them, government radio said.
“We congratulate our nation’s fist, Manny Pacquiao. Our president joins in commending his victory,” Aquino spokesman Sonny Coloma said afterwards.
Now Many Filipinos are desperate to see Pacquiao fight American Floyd Mayweather Jr. to decide once and for all who is the pound-for-pound king of boxing.