Pacquiao: Philippine drug problem beyond imagination
TOKYO: The Philippine drug problem is “beyond imagination”, boxing legend Manny Pacquiao said here yesterday, defending his hardliner president’s controversial anti-drug campaign.
Pacquiao, a national hero and elected senator, is a high-profile supporter of President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on crime that has left more than 3,700 people dead in four months.
“The problem in our country is beyond our expectation, beyond our imagination. These illegal drugs in our country is really bad,” he said at a press conference held by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
“A lot of our government officials, elected officials are involved in illegal drugs,” he said, defending Duterte’s crackdown which has drawn global condemnation for alleged extrajudicial killings.
Pacquiao, who was elected to the Senate in May, supports Duterte’s call to restore the death penalty for drug traffickers in the mainly Catholic nation.
He himself is a convert to a conservative Christian sect.
“My main focus is to change our country, hold our president’s advocacy, because the president and I are very close, and join together to fight illegal drugs in our country.”
He was visiting the city to prepare for the opening of a new gym in his chain, the first to be opened outside the Philippines.
The 37-year-old boxing superstar shocked the world of sports in September when he admitted in an interview he had used narcotics in his youth.
He said he “sampled” marijuana and syabu, the local name for the cheap and highly addictive crystal meth stimulant, when he was 15 or 16.
At the press conference here, he made no secret of the fact he had tried illegal drugs before.
“But, I realised it’s not good and I don’t like it. That’s why I strongly oppose and fight these illegal drugs,” he said. AFP