*Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope, PhD, EdD, DM
I have played chess with Manny Pacquiao many times at his house in Forbes Park.
Sometimes I won. Sometimes Manny won.
I have talked with Manny. I have listened to him. I have watched how he thinks, how he reacts, and how he approaches a problem. And those encounters allowed me to see something that television cameras, boxing matches, campaign advertisements, and political speeches do not always reveal.
There is much more to Manny Pacquiao than the boxer people see.
It is easy to judge Manny by the education he did not have. But perhaps we should also look at the intelligence he developed despite not having the opportunities that others enjoyed.
Manny was not given many of the educational opportunities that some of us were fortunate enough to receive. Many grew up with parents capable of supporting them from elementary school through college, with good schools, books, allowances, guidance, and the luxury of concentrating on education.
Manny had a different classroom.
He had the streets.
That should never be romanticized. Poverty is not a substitute for education, and hardship should never be glorified. But neither should we commit the opposite mistake of believing that intelligence can only be developed inside classrooms and universities.
There is also street intelligence.
It is the intelligence developed by someone forced to observe people, recognize danger, calculate risks, discover opportunities, improvise with limited resources, learn from mistakes, and solve problems because sometimes there is simply no other choice.
That is something I noticed about Manny.
He is more of a solution guy than a fault-finding guy.
And perhaps that is something worth considering before we dismiss his new responsibility in the government’s fight against poverty.
I Have Seen His Moves
Chess tells you interesting things about a person.
You cannot simply move whatever piece you want and hope for the best. You must anticipate. You must calculate. You must recognize patterns. You must know when to attack and when to defend. Sometimes you sacrifice something today because you see an opportunity several moves ahead.
I have sat across the chessboard from Manny many times.
I have seen his moves. I have observed his tactics.
Sometimes I beat him. Sometimes he beat me.
But the important thing I learned was this:
Manny understands strategy.
And when we look at his life, perhaps that should not surprise us.
Boxing is strategy.
Chess is strategy.
Politics is strategy.
And fighting poverty is strategy.
But poverty is a far more complicated opponent than anything Manny has encountered inside a boxing ring or across a chessboard.
There are no twelve rounds. There is no referee. There is no single opponent.
Poverty is intertwined with education, employment, wages, livelihood, health, housing, food security, infrastructure, social protection, inequality, geography, governance, and opportunity.
No single person can master all of those.
Certainly not Manny.
But neither can any economist, lawyer, professor, politician, or bureaucrat.
That is why institutions have teams.
Manny Has the Heart. Now He Needs the Right Minds Around Him.
Critics are entitled to question Manny Pacquiao’s qualifications for leading an anti-poverty institution.
Is Manny an economist?
No.
Is he a community development specialist?
No.
Is he an academic authority on poverty reduction?
No.
We should not pretend otherwise.
But the more important question is not whether Manny personally possesses every technical competency necessary to fight poverty.
The question is:
Can he recognize competent people, bring them together, listen to them, lead them, and turn their expertise into results?
That is leadership.
Leadership is not knowing everything.
Sometimes the greatest evidence of leadership is knowing what you do not know and having the humility to find someone who knows it better.
This is why Manny’s choices for Undersecretaries, Assistant Secretaries, advisers, consultants, and senior technical officials will be crucial.
At an anti-poverty agency, Manny does not need to surround himself primarily with lawyers and political operators.
Of course, government needs lawyers. Legal expertise has an important place wherever laws, regulations, contracts, rights, and institutional mandates are involved.
But poverty is not principally a legal problem. Poverty is a multidimensional development problem.
Manny needs community development specialists.
He needs educators.
He needs economists, public-policy experts, researchers, statisticians, social-development practitioners, livelihood and employment specialists, grassroots organizers, and professionals who have spent years working with poor communities.
His Undersecretaries and Assistant Secretaries should not merely accompany him.
They should complement him.
Where Manny lacks technical expertise, they should provide it.
Where experts become trapped in statistics and bureaucracy, Manny should remind them of the people behind those numbers.
Manny can provide the heart, direction, political will, lived experience, strategic instinct, and ability to connect with ordinary Filipinos.
His technical team must provide the science, evidence, policy architecture, institutional knowledge, and implementation capability.
That is not a weakness in leadership.
That is what leadership is supposed to look like.
He Was Poor Before He Became Rich
There is also something incomplete about dismissing Manny because he is extraordinarily wealthy today.
Yes, Manny Pacquiao became rich.
But he was not born rich.
He knows poverty not merely as a statistic but as an experience.
That does not automatically make him an expert in poverty alleviation. We must be intellectually fair about that. Personal hardship cannot replace economics, statistics, development studies, education, public administration, or evidence-based policymaking.
But neither should lived experience be treated as irrelevant.
An economist can explain poverty through numbers.
A statistician can measure its incidence.
An educator can understand how inadequate schooling perpetuates poverty across generations.
A community development specialist can understand why a program that looks brilliant on paper may collapse when it reaches an actual barangay.
A policy expert can translate objectives into sustainable interventions.
And someone who once experienced poverty can remind all of them what those numbers ultimately represent.
People.
Families.
Children.
Parents deciding which bill can wait.
Workers wondering whether their wages will last until payday.
Students whose dreams may depend on whether their families can afford to keep them in school.
Perhaps the strongest anti-poverty leadership is therefore not a choice between expertise and experience.
It is the combination of both.
Manny brings lived experience.
Now he must bring expertise into the room.
Manny, Be Careful Who Stands in Your Corner
This is perhaps the most important advice I would give him.
Be very careful about the people you allow into your corner.
Government attracts dedicated public servants.
But power also attracts opportunists.
There will always be people who want to stand beside Manny Pacquiao because they believe in his mission.
Unfortunately, there will also be people who want to stand beside Manny because they believe in Manny Pacquiao’s usefulness to them.
There is an enormous difference.
Some will see his position.
Some will see his connections.
Some will see his popularity.
Some will see his resources.
Some may even see his possible political future.
Manny must distinguish between people who genuinely want to serve with him and people who merely want to use him.
He does not need flatterers.
He does not need officials whose greatest qualification is personal loyalty.
He does not need people who say yes before he has even finished asking the question.
He needs professionals courageous enough to disagree with him.
He needs an economist capable of saying, “Sir, the numbers do not support this.”
He needs a community development specialist willing to say, “Sir, that may work in a conference room, but it will not work in the barangay.”
He needs educators who understand that poverty cannot be solved simply through temporary assistance.
He needs policy experts who understand the difference between a program that produces publicity and a program that produces sustainable outcomes.
And Manny must possess the humility to listen to them.
Because a good heart without competent advice can still produce bad policy.
And technical brilliance without integrity can produce something even worse.
Manny needs both.
Good hearts and good minds.
Perhaps Filipinos Never Really Rejected Manny
Manny Pacquiao lost the presidential election in 2022 and later failed in his attempt to return to the Senate.
Those are political facts.
But election defeats do not necessarily mean that Filipinos stopped liking Manny Pacquiao.
Perhaps his political problem was something different.
Manny failed to deliver the political message that genuinely represented who Manny Pacquiao really is.
Political campaigns sometimes make the mistake of manufacturing candidates instead of revealing them.
Consultants create slogans. Advertising agencies polish images. Strategists manufacture narratives. Alliances complicate identities. Eventually, an extraordinary person begins sounding like every other politician.
But Manny never needed anyone to invent his story.
His life was already the story.
A poor Filipino boy who fought his way out of poverty.
A child denied many of the advantages enjoyed by others who nevertheless developed himself through reading, discipline, observation, experience, perseverance, and extraordinary determination.
A Filipino who rose from the streets to become a world champion.
That was Manny’s most powerful message.
Somewhere in electoral politics, that authentic narrative became blurred.
Perhaps this appointment gives him an opportunity to rediscover it.
Not through another political advertisement.
Not through another campaign slogan.
Not through another boxing comeback.
Through public service.
His Old Charisma Won Fights. His New Charisma Must Change Lives.
There was a time when Manny Pacquiao possessed an extraordinary kind of national charisma.
When he entered the boxing ring, Filipinos temporarily forgot many of the things that divided them. Political affiliations seemed irrelevant. Social classes disappeared for a few hours.
His victory somehow became our victory.
But charisma built inside a boxing ring cannot sustain a political career forever.
Manny now has an opportunity to transform that charisma into something deeper.
His old charisma came from personal triumph.
His new charisma must come from public service, competence, compassion, and results.
If he enters poor communities not merely for photographs but to listen, if he brings together educators, economists, development specialists, local governments, civil society organizations, and grassroots leaders, if he demands measurable outcomes instead of ceremonial accomplishments, and if families eventually feel that government programs actually changed their lives, something remarkable could happen.
Filipinos may rediscover Manny Pacquiao.
And perhaps Manny Pacquiao may rediscover himself as a public servant.
He will not regain that charisma by knocking somebody down.
He can regain it by helping people stand up.
Give Him a Chance, Then Hold Him Accountable
This is why Manny should neither be condemned prematurely nor celebrated uncritically.
Give him a chance.
Then hold him accountable.
Do not judge him merely by his diploma.
But do not judge him merely by his heart either.
Look at whom he appoints.
Look at his Undersecretaries and Assistant Secretaries.
Examine the qualifications of his advisers.
Study his programs.
Follow the money.
Demand transparency.
Measure outcomes.
And ultimately ask the only question that truly matters:
Did the lives of poor Filipinos improve?
If they did not, then criticize him.
If they did, give him credit.
Manny does not have to prove that he knows more economics than economists.
He has to prove that he knows how to find good economists, educators, community development specialists, and policy experts; how to listen to them; how to lead them; and how to translate their expertise into something ordinary Filipinos can actually feel.
One More Chess Game
And so my thoughts return to those chess games with Manny at his house in Forbes Park.
Perhaps there is something about those games that applies to the challenge before him today.
A chess player does not win merely because he possesses powerful pieces.
He must know which pieces he needs.
He must understand what each one can do.
He must put the right piece in the right position at the right moment.
He must anticipate threats.
He must recognize opportunities.
And sometimes, even a good chess player benefits from a coach who can see something on the board that the player himself has overlooked.
Boxing teaches the same lesson.
Even the greatest fighter needs a corner.
There is a coach.
There is a trainer.
There are strategists.
There are people studying the opponent while the fighter concentrates on surviving and winning the round.
Manny understood that when he became a world champion.
He understands strategy when he sits across a chessboard.
Now he must apply that same wisdom to government.
His community development specialists, educators, economists, researchers, social-development practitioners, policy experts, Undersecretaries, and Assistant Secretaries must become his new corner.
Choose them carefully, Manny.
Choose people who will challenge you, not merely praise you.
Choose people who understand poverty, not merely politics.
Choose people who understand communities, not merely government offices.
Choose people who are searching for solutions, not people searching for positions.
Choose people who want to accomplish something, not merely become somebody.
And most importantly, choose people who genuinely want to help the poor, not people who simply want to use Manny Pacquiao.
Because this may become one of the greatest fights of your public life.
This time, there will be no championship belt waiting at the end.
There will be something far more important.
Lives changed. Families lifted. Children given opportunities. Communities given hope.
Manny Pacquiao spent much of his life proving that one poor Filipino can rise.
Perhaps this appointment gives him the chance to prove something even greater:
that millions can rise with him.
You no longer need to show us how hard Manny Pacquiao can fight.
Show us how hard you can fight for those who are still where you once were.
And Manny, from someone who has sat across the chessboard from you many times, remember what every chess player eventually learns:
You cannot win with strategy alone.
You need the right pieces, in the right places, making the right moves.
Choose your people well.
This time, the entire country is watching the board.
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