A culture of mediocrity has descended upon our accursed land.

        Ask any seven-year-old boy this question: What would you like to be when you grow up, a doctor like Jose Rizal or a boxer like Manny Pacquiao? Majority will instantaneously answer: “Manny Pacquiao;” while a curious few may ask who is Jose Rizal before choosing Pacman.

        There is nothing wrong with Manny Pacquiao being the role model for our youth.

        He is a Pinoy modern-day Midas. Everything that he touches turns into gold. He rose to fame and fortune with the power of his boxing skills. He is humble, takes communion before every bout, makes the sign of the cross at the start of each round and knells and prays in his corner after it’s over, win or lose. He deserves all the adulation, all the encomiums that Filipinos everywhere throw upon his feet.

        It is how certain politicians have held on to his coattails, capitalized on his star appeal and packaged him as a demigod who is not only a great Filipino boxer but also an excellent actor, singer, chess player, philosopher, a uniter who never fails to call upon Filipinos to unite (nothing wrong that, either) -- behind GMA. Now there is the catch. It is as if the one shining achievement of this administration is Manny Pacquiao.

        How has it come to this?

        Instances of palakasan, privileges, palusot by this administration has made Manny the role model that he should not be.

        At the Beijing Olympics, the administration made him the flag bearer at the last hour though he was not a member of the Philippine Olympic team.

        When Manny ran for congressman, the Comelec exempted him from the firearms ban with much fanfare, the press listing down the number of long and short firearms that he could carry.

        The DECS used an old program for gifted out-of-school youth who have high IQs but not much formal education to give him one test, and later announced through a press release that he passed with flying colors. When a group of UP high school teachers proposed an independent test, the DECS gave no response. Let’s give Manny the benefit of the doubt. Media later reported that he is enrolled at Dadiangas University for a business management degree. While training six months for his coming fight with Horacio de la Hoya, Manny stayed in the US. Did he earn units while preparing for his megabucks fight?

        The Post Office put him on its postage stamp faster than his right jab and left cross could land. The AFP made him a sergeant, and as he toured the military camps to boost soldiers’ morale, lo and behold, officers from lieutenants to four-star generals salute him first. When CMT cadets who are made to push up 20 times for failure to salute their officers properly and promptly complain: “Eh, bakit si Manny, siya pa ang sinasaluduhan?” Answer: “Hindi ka naman si Manny, give me another 20!”

        A former governor now the deputy national security adviser never fails to climb up the boxing ring after each of Manny’s bout. Whenever the First Gentleman is around, he sits beside Manny in his dressing room and after congratulating him, gives his cellphone to Manny so he could talk to GMA in front of TV cameras and radio microphones seen and heard around the world. He endorses all products, from beer to painkillers, and his life-size posters are all over the islands. An aging actress even wept on TV when ugly rumors went around that, according to her, “ine-regalo daw ako kay Manny.”

        So it is not surprising that a mere PE major was appointed assistant secretary of agriculture and then GSIS trustee, the better to equip him to run errands for Double Joc (pronounced “Talk”) Bolante to distribute P720 million in fertilizers and farm implements to congressmen, governors and mayors and some fictitious farmers’ organizations.

        No eyebrows were raised when a pre-med graduate was appointed to the Cabinet as national security adviser. Or an architecture dropout was appointed DENR secretary. Four recycled AFP chiefs of staff and DND secretaries and PNP chiefs are holding the choicest Cabinet positions in the country: Executive Secretary, DOTC, DPWH, and Energy secretaries make for a strong republic. The other ex-chief of staff and DND head almost gave away Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, just so his Boss could make good on her promise that the Philippines shall be free of Muslim separatist and NPA rebellions by 2010.

        When Cebu’s new “owners” (after the Osmenas) headed by its patriarch, 83-year-old Rep. Pablo Garcia, Sr. (his daughter Gwendolyn is the Cebu governor, his son is a congressman in another district, and his other son heads the GSIS) belittled the surveys showing 70% of Filipinos disapprove of GMA, he emphatically claimed that even Jesus Christ lost out in a survey to the thief Barabas when the Jews were asked by Pontius Pilate to choose whom to crucify. The shock is not this blasphemous comparison, but that only one bishop came up with a lame though cathechetical reply: The circumstances between Jesus and GMA are far different. Every other bishop must have been busy gathering signatures against the Reproductive Health bill, not knowing that they are partly to blame for this proposed law.

         As GMA was currying for the bishops’ favor, she marginalized the Population Commission, promoted the pro-life stand of the Church. In Manila Mayor Atienza asked the puericulture centers and maternity clinics to stop distributing condoms. Manila’s population ballooned. Our population program was very much ahead of Thailand.

         Taking a leaf from our Population Commission, Thailand has curbed population growth to 68 million, whereas we now have 84 million and growing by almost 2 million a year, though 2 decades ago we had almost the same population as Thailand. As a result, the USAID withdrew millions of dollars in reproductive health assistance from us. To fill the void, Rep Edcel C. Lagman reintroduced the reproductive health bill of his daughter (a nurse, who served in Congress for two terms; she is now mayor of Tabaco City) with an appropriation of P2 billion. Since this is in the 2009 budget, all the House has to do is not to pass the 2010 budget then use the appropriations and savings of the 2009 budget for election purposes in 2010. This was what happened to the 2003 budget for the “GMA fertilizer and farm implements’ program” that Double Joc is now being investigated for.

        In Taipei and South Korea they jailed their past presidents for corruption. In Thailand they ousted and sentenced Prime Minister Thaksin to jail for corruption.

        In contrast, here in our country, Ms. Esperat, the one who first exposed the fertilizer scam and filed before the Ombudsman cases against Double Joc and his cohorts, was killed in front of her family in Mindanao. Three weeks ago the newspapers reported that her case was dismissed for lack of evidence. On the other hand, the case that the Ombudsman did file against a former Secretary of Justice over the alleged $2 million extort case was dismissed by the Sandiganbayan for failure of the Ombudsman to prosecute the case and submit its evidence after four years.

        The third impeachment case against GMA was dismissed for lack of substance by the House. GMA’s allies even used the idiomatic expression, “Where is the beef?” As the Bolante hearings will show, they are now fertilizers. And if you complain that the fertilizers were diluted with water, were overpriced 1,200% and were for ornamental plants, not rice and corn, go to Davao and smell the orchids. That’s what Double Joc counsels, and Speaker Prospero Nograles agrees with him, complete with video clips.

        I’m not a boxing fan but I like watching Manny’s fights on TV. When the national anthem is sung, my heart skips a little. Like many others, I shouted with joy and feel a sense of victory and pride when Manny wins.

         But why, this time around, do I secretly wish that the theater would stop and Oscar de la Hoya’s vaunted left hook would find its mark and burst the bubble of Pacman?

         Yes, so that the Filipino kid out there will have a fighting chance. Like Pacman, before politics.