Volume 5, Issue No. 8
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
Our latest as of Wednesday, August 30, 2023
~ A notorious social media poster has claimed without proof that the recent Taste of Manila festival had amassed over half-a-million attendees in such a relatively small place as Little Manila. It sounds like a typical hype by an organization seeking legitimacy as an events organizer to boost its standing among potential sponsors, vendors, politicians, and supporters. If the claim is true, which is doubtful, it's a giant leap by the moribund street fest that had been or still mired in legal controversy.
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TASTE OF MANILA 2023
Was the Number of Attendees Hyperbolic?
Is It 'Record-Breaking' or Record-Padding?
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable". - Hosea Ballou
TORONTO - Five hundred thousand, fifty thousand, five thousand. (Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNhAaEbyiJI).
Organizers of the recent Taste of Manila (ToM) festival picked the first figure (500,000 or 500K or half-a million) as the estimated number of people who trekked to Little Manila for the Aug. 19-20 event.
To make sure I'm not the only one disbelieving that claim posted on social media by a human troll named Marites Tolits (who in real life is Rose Ami aka Rosemarie Ami-Seaborn), I watched some videos of the event taken by people who were also there.
Perhaps the closest to the number is in this video by Zam's TV which walked the distance along Bathurst St. from Invermay Ave. to Wilson Ave.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8fcr9N8cZs
A YouTube poster named Ang Probinsyana Sa America. had her video (at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk-61dQ983w) which basically complements mine.
I mean it's not showing anything to demonstrate people converging in the hundreds of thousands. Just take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg_cmjrUkN8.
Another video by Toronto Life As It Is matches other videos showing people much less than what is claimed and posted on social media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-unXtCbaNE
According to Sani Baluyot of SPARC (Society of Philippine Artists, Recreation and Community) "police on duty unoffcially (sic) estimated the crowd to be at more than 500K running total which is higher than the past years' number of attendees on all Filipino festivals across North America".
Absent an official authoritative source, I'd say the number is a bit of a stretch. Being an upstart trying to make a mark, SPARC is prone to exaggerate, as did Marites Tolits who is as unreliable as most officials in ToM with a forked tongue.
Sought for comment, the official arbiter of this claim, the Toronto Police Service, did not respond to questions as of this writing.
I've covered every ToM since 2014 - in fact, I helped it grow - until the coronavirus pandemic forced it into hibernation in 2020. The last in-person staging in 2019 had attracted a sizable crowd officially estimated at between 350,000 to 400,000.
It was revived virtually by a team led by its alleged founder, Rolly Mangante, a former driver of the Philippine consulate who, for lack of resources, stole film footage and photos from The Filipino Web Channel, manipulated them, and spliced them with images of his wife Nieves Mangante and their friends. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_398v7dDQhQ)
Related story about Rolly Mangante: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2020/01/3-in-1-who-is-amba-congen-consul-of.html
Baluyot's statement may be a biased assessment to elevate a fledgling not-for-profit org like SPARC and the people behind it as legitimate events organizers even as ToM itself and its purported founder have not addressed allegations of fraud and thievery.
The number as claimed is staggering. It's a big leap. A multitude of revelers such as the alleged half-a-million people would put a strain on logistics, city services such as garbage collection, security by police and private guards, transport, vendors and the like.
Based on experience, it would be quite difficult to walk the length of Bathurst from Wilson Ave. to Invermay Ave. and take videos when one's in the midst of hundreds of thousands of people without bumping into others or breathing down their necks.
There may be some truth to assertions by Baluyot who says, and I quote him: "I personally had chats with vendors on both days and informed me that they are happy with the turnout. There are times they sold out of food to sell and needed to add more inventory".
But he wouldn't say how he came to that conclusion, explaining that "no amount of total sales had been discussed".
One thing he may have unwittingly confirmed was the practice by top officials of ToM to line up their pockets by squeezing unlisted vendors between legitimately-paying booths. That kind of under-the-table deal has caused altercation between and among vendors and ToM.
"No insertion from any group happened," Baluyot says when asked this question: "How many officially-paying vendors (as distinguished from "under-the-table" vendors usually inserted by Rolly Mangante in between booths and whose payments go to his pocket) were there from end to end of Bathurst from Wilson Ave. to Invermay?"
Baluyot did not respond to other questions, notably about money, or how it would be split among International Entertainment Company, SPARC and Mangante, and SPARC's current financial standing post-ToM.
He states: "SPARC is not in any position to answer any queries not related to TOM2023 implementation. with regards to the MOU that SPARC and IEC signed, that will remain confidential guided by our respective legal teams.
"I hope that I have answered your questions and no further comments after this," he concludes. (Copyright 2023. All Rights Reserved).
