While the 46-year-old mayor is expected to bank on his rags-to-power life story, movie star looks and widely praised projects in Manila, including cleaning up its filthy main roads and restoring order in its chaotic streets and public markets, Moreno will be up against formidable national politicians and celebrities.
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Philippine boxing star and senator Manny Pacquiao to join country’s 2022 presidential race
Philippine boxing star and senator Manny Pacquiao to join country’s 2022 presidential race
Two senators have declared their intent to run – international boxing star Manny Pacquiao and Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief. At least seven other politicians have said they were considering either a presidential run or lower posts, including Vice-President Leni Robredo, who leads the opposition; Duterte’s daughter, who is currently the mayor of their southern hometown city, and a son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.Duterte’s successor stands to inherit enormous problems led by the pandemic, a battered economy, long-entrenched poverty and decades-long communist and Muslim insurgencies.
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“This is not about Mr and Mrs Congeniality. This is about making hard decisions and sacrifices,” Moreno said. From “a rotten and downtrodden city,” Manila re-emerged as a competitive and much-improved capital under him in less than two years “because of fast action and fast decision-making and not getting stuck by digging up past baggage and just moving on”, he said.
Moreno’s camp said he will formally declare his presidential bid later on Wednesday with his vice presidential running mate, Willie Ong, a cardiologist who provides medical advice to ordinary Filipinos on a Facebook account with more than 16 million followers.
Moreno said he picked a doctor instead of a political heavyweight as his running mate so his vice-president could focus on the pandemic while he leads efforts for an economic rebound if they win.
“It’s politically unorthodox, but it makes sense,” Moreno said.
Human rights groups and other critics have expressed shock over Duterte’s move, which they said aims to shield him from domestic and international prosecution over his bloody anti-drugs crackdown, which has left thousands of mostly petty suspects dead.
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He has fiercely attacked his most outspoken critics, including a senator who has been jailed for four years for criminal charges she said were fabricated to muzzle her. Moreno has generally kept friendly ties with Duterte, but two weeks ago, he slammed the tough-talking president’s administration for its handling of the pandemic and his obscene attacks against opponents and pleaded that he remove thieves in government. He challenged Duterte to a confrontation in Tondo, the Manila slum where Moreno grew up.The son of a stevedore, Moreno scavenged for leftover food from restaurants as a child and collected scrap bottles and newspapers for money, according to the mayor’s website.
In 1993, he was spotted at a funeral wake by a show business recruiter in a crucial turning point in his life that landed him in the movies, which, five years later would serve as his springboard to politics.
A hands-on mayor, Moreno has been compared to Duterte and Indonesia’s Joko Widodo who both rose to the presidency after serving as city mayors despite coming from outside the political elite.“Isko resonates with the ‘regular guy’ image of Duterte minus the cursing and misogyny,” says Jean Encinas-Franco, a political science associate professor at the University of the Philippines. “He is also telegenic and youthful. Hence, it is easy to package him as representing change.”
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