Questions Arise on Fate of ToM Festival in 2023

Volume 4, Issue No. 25

OPINION/COMMENTARY

/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /

. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . . . .

 

 Our latest as of Thursday, November 17, 2022 

~ The fledgling not-for-profit has barely begun its work, but the path it has taken toward putting up a street festival next year is already littered with difficulties, both legal and personal. The biggest, and potentially costly, seems to be a looming court battle. And then a renowned volunteer - friends to everyone in community organizations - has resigned, apparently after being misled. An officer of the org is denying an alleged deception on his part.  

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THE FUTURE TASTE OF MANILA HANGS IN THE BALANCE

Is SPARC Being Deceitful?

Toronto's Popular "Volunteer ng Bayan" Quits

By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ 

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

"The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends". - Marcus Tullius Cicero

TORONTO - The low-profile, unassuming community volunteer merely wanted to help, and as to be expected of her, she would have signed up for one of the biggest Filipino street festivals in the Greater Toronto Area.

Her sterling reputation as "volunteer ng bayan" is known to all, which is quite a tribute to the apolitical nature of volunteer work she chooses to strengthen the bonds between and among organizations.

In a recent instance, she was faced with a dilemma. The organizers of two competing events are both her friends. Concerned about showing any favoritism and the negative optics it would generate, she decided to just stay out and watched their events unfold.

To her astonishment past the happenings, she found her name listed among "the people behind" a fledgling organization, the glitzy-named Society of Philippine Artists, Recreation and Community (SPARC) headed by relatively-unknown newbies in community organizing.

Porteria Barker, nicknamed Terry, has denied she's one of those people. That clarification directly contravenes the claim of Danilo "Sani" Baluyot, SPARC's executive director, who had announced she and four other individuals as behind SPARC, a not-for-profit org that surfaced only in September.

"Why would my inclusion in this project be of any use to them?" she asks in an email reacting to an earlier story. "I can certainly tell you that I am not behind SPARC," Terry adds. (Full story at: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2022/11/new-taste-of-manila-in-jeopardy.html).

The denial could indicate how haphazard SPARC came into being. Background information about "the people behind" the organization has not been made available as promised by Baluyot a month ago.

Terry explains her decision, thus: "All I wanted was to help out in the community any way I can. You can ask anyone in the community. I don't like trouble and I have never been a part of any organization".

Perhaps the "trouble" Terry had intuitively foreseen would happen is the brewing scandal between the combined SPARC and Taste of Manila Inc. (ToMI), on the one hand, and the International Entertainment Company (IEC) which undertook the Taste of Manila (ToM) festival in August this year, on the other.

ToMI is the recently-emerged family enterprise by the purported ToM founder, the feckless Rolly Mangante alias "kabise" and his wife Nieves and daughter Jacqueline. ToMI had not been known to exist prior to the 2022 ToM.

The IEC's Cecille Araneta who was once buddy-buddy with Mangante is reportedly undertaking a legal battle with 1) ToMI as a corporate entity, 2) the Mangantes as officers and directors of ToMI, and 3) the entire SPARC headed by Baluyot and some officers, including the largely-unknown role players like Pepito Torralba (no relation to the famous and respected Mon Torralba of Hotdog fame and wife Teresa), realtor Rose Ami, and Dannasol Luna, the pretend "reporter" friends categorized as "pinabili ng suka, pagbalik journalist na".

So it stands to reason why Terry is so vocal about her non-involvement with either ToM or SPARC. Her participation with one or the other would drag her into the fray.

After reading my article about SPARC, Terry promptly sent an email explaining her situation. "Please be advised that I have handed my resignation to SPARC as of October 20, 2022. I am no longer affiliated with the group," she writes.

That was just four days after Mangante and Baluyot bared their arrangement during a soft launch at the Republika resto grill in Little Manila on October 16. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ap92btLM8).

Further queried why she did that, she said she decided to leave the moment she learned that SPARC was involved with ToM.

"When I found out, I spoke to my hubby about it and he told me that I should quit and not join such a group as it will take too much of my time," she says.

She wondered how her name came up in the list provided by Baluyot, explaining "I have never been involved in any talks about ToM, so I don't know how and when SPARC got involved".

"To be honest, I have been a volunteer in the community for a long time. I was dubbed as volunteer ng bayan," she emphasizes. 

"I am friends with and well-liked by almost everyone in the community, which is why I don't want to be tied down to any group. I want to freely volunteer at all the events and not have to deal with politics," she adds.

Asked if she felt being deceived and used by SPARC as a prop to drum up support for its proposed ToM in August 2023, Terry replies: "You could, I guess, say that . . . but I'm merely a volunteer ng bayan".

Confronted with the question, Baluyot took exception to claims of deceiving Terry as part of SPARC. (Related story at: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-nauseating-hypocrisy-of-tom.html).

Here's his reply, verbatim: "I categorically deny that allegation. Porteria (Terry) and I have been a long time friend and co worker with my past projects and I will never deceived her or anyone to join my group".

Baluyot also said that Terry, in his words, "requested to resign from SPARC due to change of workload with her official employment and informed me that her little extra free time will be allocated to her family". 

SPARC has signed an agreement with Mangante to manage the ToM festival in 2023. In effect, Mangante has dumped IEC, the not-for-profit org he had earlier contracted to handle ToM in August. IEC has yet to recover its losses from that festival.

But even as problems mount, SPARC, according to Baluyot, "is on target for August 2023 TOM". Well, let's wait and see. (Copyright 2022. All Rights Reserved).