Eight-division boxing champion Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao is heading back into public office, this time under the man who defeated him at the polls three years ago. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. tapped the retired fighter on Tuesday to lead the National Anti-Poverty Commission, closing a political gap that opened when Pacquiao lost the 2022 presidential race to Marcos.
The commission Pacquiao will now head serves as the government’s coordinating body for poverty reduction, linking national agencies, local governments and private-sector partners around social reform efforts. Part of its mandate involves guiding the president on policy and on how resources should be directed at the underlying drivers of poverty nationwide.
For a role built around lifting Filipinos out of hardship, Pacquiao brings a personal history that maps directly onto the assignment. Long before the world titles and the wealth, he was a school dropout hawking goods on the streets of General Santos City to help feed his family.
“I came from poverty. I experienced sleeping on cardboard on the streets, drinking only water, having nothing to eat, and saving loose coins just to help my family,” Pacquiao said in a statement.
That early struggle included stints as a ship stowaway and street fights that paid him roughly $2 apiece as a boy. His fortunes reversed dramatically over the following decades. Forbes ranked him the world’s top-earning athlete in both 2012 and 2015, and Sports Illustrated pegged his net worth at $220 million last year.
The former senator has carried a reputation for giving throughout his public life, pouring sums of his own money into housing developments for impoverished Filipinos and distributing cash to crowds who lined up after his big-money bouts.
How he intends to run the commission remains unclear, as Pacquiao has not yet laid out any specifics on his approach to the post.
