Manny Pacquiao had retired from professional boxing at the age of 43 to pursue another of his major ambitions: becoming President of the Philippines and lifting tens of thousands of Filipinos out of poverty.
He spent months travelling every corner of the Asian nation, promising to tackle corruption and drugs in order to raise the population’s level of living.
His countrymen turned away from him.;
His views, however, did not resonate, and even before the presidential election, pre-election surveys gave him a slim chance of winning.
The boxer received only roughly 4 million votes (6.6 percent) after the original count, placing third behind Marcos Jr. and the liberal Leni Robredo.
Under this scenario, he was left with no alternative but to acknowledge his defeat.
“As a boxer and an athlete, I know how to accept defeat. I just hope that even if I lost this fight, my fellow Filipinos who are suffering will win,” Pacquiao said in a video posted on social media.
Transparent elections
For their part, international observers agreed that the elections were transparent, despite the lack of privacy when it came to voting.
“The preliminary result of the vote represents the will of the Filipino people, although a number of concerns have been raised about the integrity of the process that need to be addressed urgently,” one of the researchers from the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) said at a press conference.