Volume 5, Issue No. 12
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
Our latest as of Wednesday, September 27, 2023
~ The Taste of Manila festival came and went, and presumably fattened the purse of its organizers. An excited official says "vendors made money" and urged a repeat of the event. But the big question remains unanswered: how true is the claim that half-a-million people went to the celebratory feast? At the height of his popularity, the prime minister of Canada managed to attract only 350,000 people in 2016? How different is this year's?
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ARE THE "ARTISTS" IN S.P.A.R.C. SCAM ARTISTS?
No Financial Report Despite Claims ToM Made Money
Which One Is True: 'Almost' or 'Over' 500K People?
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable". - Hosea Ballou
TORONTO - Reading through screenshots of Facebook postings by officials behind the just ended Taste of Manila (ToM) festival has given me the opening to critique wild claims being bandied about post-ToM.
When these officials could not agree on the number of people who attended the event last month, one could almost be sure they're guessing, or at the extreme, lying.
There's some sort of Trumpism there, and I mean the propensity to exaggerate, over-value, overstate, and embroider things to pander to their base and to unknowing sponsors.
Their use of adverbs such as almost and over contradicts each other, which is quite an acknowledgement of my earlier article that raised the issue of crowd counting. (Related story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2023/08/taste-of-manila-fest-takes-giant-leap.html).
One may argue that ToM is already done this year, so what's the point of bringing it up? Well, if we don't challenge the unproven claim, organizers would continue to inflate numbers to pull in unsuspecting sponsors. That means more money for them. Is this not a con game?
Was the number more or less 500,000 as declared, or anywhere from 50,000 to the historic high of 400,000 as speculated, or 5,000 or 500 people in attendance?
On its own, zero (0) denotes nothing, neither magnitude nor quantity. But when added to other numbers, for example, 50,000 plus zero, the comma and the period move, the equation expands, and in this case, to half a million or 500,000.
As notable as ToM is, it would take a superstar, a megastar, a big shot, a hotshot, an icon, or whatever one may call it, to swarm ToM to new heights of popularity and muster half-a-million people.
The fact that the main organizer SPARC (Society of Philippine Artists, Recreation and Community) and its dispossessed partner IEC (International Entertainment Company) are newbies, and therefore, have no reliable track record of success in the field adds more doubt to their published assertions.
Despite their shrieking fans, the imported talents from Manila were not big crowd-drawers themselves. Neither the politicians - virtual unknowns in the community - who took the lead in a short parade.
I for one find it hard to believe the people who were there reached the half-a-million mark as claimed. There's just no information on when that number was tallied. Was it on the first day, on the second day? Or the day's estimates were aggregated, and at what point?
With his good looks that sent lonely matrons to orgasmic fits and his prominence as a politician in 2016, Justin Trudeau attracted a crowd of only 350,000 (the official estimate), and he's the prime minister of Canada. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCnr3L5Dpcg).
On its last in-person staging in 2019 prior to the coronavirus pandemic, ToM had drew in upwards of 350,000 to an estimated 400,000 people. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1cIFfkpnQI).
Sani Baluyot of SPARC says: "I just heard that we are hearing almost half-a-million attendees just for today". Watch at the 0:25 mark: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=168992976180607
His partner in SPARC, the hyperbolic Marites Tolits alias Rose Ami aka Rosemarie Ami-Seaborn, writes: "Over 500K celebrated with us at the Taste of Manila 2023 - Organized by SPARC on the streets of Bathurst St. and Wilson Ave... We were happy with the results overall as there were no untoward incidents that happened, vendors made money and most of all everybody had fun! Ulitin natin to!"
The prospect for huge remuneration is what drives ToM organizers to stage the festival rather than serving the community or elevating the Filipino diaspora to mainstream respectability.
Just imagine what 500,000 people could contribute to ToM organizers' coffers, plus the monies from sponsors, and one would have a fairly good idea why they have to inflate. It's calculated to get more sponsors next year or whenever there'll be another.
Incidentally, we can assume that ToM the cash cow has now delivered the goods, is the community poised to get anything in return? (Copyright 2023. All Rights Reserved).
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