Boxing champ Pacquiao missing in action

MANILA - Philippine boxing superstar and Saranggani Congressman Manny Pacquiao has racked up the most number of absences in the House of Representatives, media reports said.

Citing House records, the ‘Philippine Daily Inquirer’ today said that Pacquiao, the world’s first eight-division champion, and Negros Occidental Congressman Jules Ledesma were absent for 60 out of the 168 session days in the 15th Congress.

“Still, he received no diminution of salary and benefits,” the daily broadsheet said, stressing that Pacquiao’s absences translate to five session months, since the Lower House of Congress holds sessions three days a week.

It added that 21 of the 290 members of the House registered perfect attendance, one of whom was Speaker Feliciano Belmonte.

Lawmakers who were present for far fewer days than Pacquiao were those who had died, taken their oath in the middle of the 15th Congress or were later dropped from the rolls over contested election results.

Ledesma, a scion of one of the richest and most landed clans in central Philippine and who is married to actress Assunta de Rossi, posted second in the most number of absences without notice at 45.

He followed former presidential son, Ang Galing Pinoy party-list Representative Juan Miguel ‘Mikey’ Arroyo, who racked up 53.

Mikey was present in the House for 112 days, a day better than his mother, former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, although the latter’s absences were due to her being under detained at the Veterans Memorial Medical Centre over cases of electoral sabotage and plunder.