(Free Malaysia Today) MANILA: Shrugging off his low rating in opinion polls, Philippine politician and former boxing star Manny Pacquiao says his impoverished roots make him the best person to be president, as he warned voters to avoid corruption-tainted candidates.

Pacquiao questioned why people supported Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the current frontrunner for the May 9 vote, pointing to the plundering of the country’s wealth during the harsh authoritarian rule of his late father and namesake.

“The root cause of our country’s problem is corruption and then we would vote for a candidate who has been tainted by corruption? What happened to us as a nation? Where is our intelligence?” Pacquiao said in an interview with Reuters yesterday.