SAN ANTONIO, Texas --- Under normal circumstances it’s asking a bit much of a boxer to prepare for two opponents simultaneously, but we’ll actually be surprised if Manny Pacquiao doesn’t have two fresh scalps on his wall a month from now.

The 2006 Fighter of the Year is a 10-1 favorite to beat Jorge Solis, an undefeated but largely untested Mexican, in Saturday night’s non-title fight at the Alamodome.

And the latest polls emanating from the Philippines show the Pac-Man with a 20-point lead in his quest to unseat incumbent Representative Darlene Antonino-Custodio in his race for a Congressional seat in his homeland.

You might expect that a boxing promoter trying to sell tickets for the former event might be somewhat annoyed by the distraction presented by the latter exercise, but whether he has developed a genuine concern for the impoverished Tagalogs of South Catobato or is, as some suspect, merely humoring his star attraction, Bob Arum has thrown himself headlong into the Pacquiao-for-Congress campaign. 

“I believe in Manny’s issues,” Arum told a San Antonio boxing audience Wednesday. “I have decided to accept his invitation to go to General Santos City to stump for him.

Arum plans to fly to the Phillipines to campaign for Pacquiao once Manny disposes of Solis, but in the meantime he has neatly folded the May 12 Filipino elections into this weekend’s Texas promotion. “PACQUAIO FOR CONGRESSMAN” posters double as advertisements for the fight, and buttons advertising Arum’s ‘Blaze of Glory’ card at the Alamodome read, simply,

 Vote for MANNY!
 April 14
LIVE ON PPV

“What does PPV stand for?” asked one pressroom wag. “Pay-per-Vote?”

Solis says he is “here to beat Manny Pacquiao.” Back in the Philippines, Darlene Antonino-Custodio appears to be somewhat less confident. The two-term congresswoman, in fact, attempted to have the telecast of Saturday night’s fight card blacked out in Pacquio’s constituency, on the grounds that its airing would violate the nation’s equal-access election laws.

(The Philippine Commission on Elections met in en banc session yesterday and ruled that the fight could be broadcast.)

Pacquiao is hoping to make the smoothest transition from the ring to government since Idi Amin, the former heavyweight champion of Uganda, proclaimed himself that nation’s president.

But what, we wondered, is Manny’s platform? I mean, the Filipino government did the right thing and pulled its troops out of Iraq three years ago, eliminating that controversy.

“The way the political system works there, the power is in the hands of entrenched oligarchies,” campaign manager Arum explained yesterday. “Two or three designated members of one family run for office and then band together to kill all progress. They only serve to protect the interests of the family business.

“Manny’s opponent is a member of a family that runs the whole economy in that part of the Philippines,” claimed Arum. “Her record is that anything the president proposes to do for the people, she opposes it.

“So Manny’s platform is very simple. He won’t represent special interests. He’ll represent the people.  It’s one thing if a politician says that, because they’re all full of shit anyway, but when somebody like Manny says it they believe it because he believes it.

“Now, whether he can really effectuate change is another question,” admitted Arum, who is no stranger to politics himself, having served in the Justice Department under Robert F. Kennedy. “But one thing I know about Manny: He really cares about people. You won’t have to worry about him being a dishonest politician.”

“If he wins it will be a great example for the other boxers of the world,” said WBC president Jose Sulaiman, who knows a bit about winning rigged elections. “I’m going to support him.”

If it strikes you as curious that Sulaiman would travel from Mexico to Texas for a fight with only his organization’s meaningless ‘International’ 130-pound belt on the line, there are at least two good reasons why he is here.

One is that there are two authentic WBC title fights on the undercard – Jorge Arce-Cristian Mijares for the 115-pound championship, and Brian Viloria-Edgar Sosa for the vacant light flyweight belt.

The other? “The WBC has a convention scheduled in the Phillipines,” said Sulaiman. “We really need a Filipino champion.”

Arum already looking past Solis, (as, one suspects, is Pacquiao), hopes to match Manny later this year against Marco Antonio Barrera, who he stopped in the 11th round of a one-sided fight here four years ago.

This would necessarily obviate a Barrera rematch with Juan Manuel Marquez that had been thought to be on the drawing board for August. Marquez, said Arum, would instead fight Umberto Soto in the fall.

”Those are the fights I want to get done, and the winners can fight each other,” he said of an arrangement that, it might be noted, appeared to have the blessing of Sr. Sulaiman, who nodded happily as the scheme unfolded.

“Of course,” said Arum, “we’ll have to schedule those fights when the Philippine legislature isn’t in session.”

M

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