Volume 5, Issue No. 32
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
Our latest as of Friday, April 19, 2024
~ What had started as a modest outreach to the community has turned into a fount of ill-will, greed and clashing egos. When it rolled out in August 2014, the Taste of Manila (ToM) festival showed promise to help alleviate the sorry situation Filipinos have found themselves in with a list of civic projects. Ten years later, ToM had nothing to show except the animosity and avarice between and among its organizers. A cash cow, an ATM? You bet it is now, especially for the role players passing themselves off as community leaders.
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2024 TASTE OF MANILA FESTIVAL
The Death of Community Service
Animosity, Greed Rule in What Was Once a Promising Outreach
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
“What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.” ―
TORONTO - Disingenuous, overambitious, pretentious. That's the regenerated Taste of Manila (ToM) festival in three simple words.
In 10 years, it has been transformed from a down-to-earth event to benefit the community to a flourishing cash cow that lines the pockets of some people playacting roles as community leaders.
From its inception in 2014, ToM was a bastard, the fruit of an illegitimate grab by a greedy manservant whose ambition in his dreary life was to be recognized and validated as an organizer.
Incompetent but not lacking the imagination of a charlatan, he declared himself ToM founder much to the astonishment of many who knew him well, not as a "consul," nor as a "congen," and certainly not as an "amba" or ambassador.
Though they were practical jokes intended to humor him, he took a liking for them, unconcerned that they were an inverse reminder that no matter how he dressed up to the nines, he was just an insignificant lackey. But he took them in just the same, relishing the moment he was referred to by any of the three names.
Realizing his inadequacy, the ToM "founder" enlisted support, first from within his circle of dubious characters, then from people who truly wanted to serve the community. In a manner of speaking, he surrendered parenting ToM to those wanting to make money as long as he got his share of the revenues.
Thus ToM's adoptive parents were born. There's ToM by PCCC (Philippine Cultural Community Centre), ToM by PLACA (Philippine Legacy and Cultural Alliance), virtual ToM by PESO (Philippine Community Events and Service Ontario), ToM by IEC (International Entertainment Company), and lately, ToM by SPARC (Society of Philippine Artists, Recreation and Community).
Were ToM a person, it would be difficult to trace his lineage. The fathers and mothers who begot him would be like a mixture of contaminated DNA. Meanwhile, the "founder" who snatched him from his rightful parents is having a grand time sitting tight somewhere as the money continues to flow in year after year after year.
ToM's last two adoptive parents - IEC and SPARC - are still locked in legal wranglings, the trouble no less stirred by the "founder" whose avarice defies explanation. Both claim to have a valid contract to manage ToM.
Actually, the greediness of the "founder" showed in 2017 when a ToM sponsor who hired him as a driver let him go after his spying activities were discovered. Soon, he had put up a competing business that relied heavily on his alleged contacts in the Philippine Consulate.
If we are to believe the social media postings by a blabbermouth masquerading as Marites Tolits, ToM has grown bigger than what the logical mind could comprehend.
The ridiculous part is the duration to which ToM would be staged, from two days in the past, to three days this year, despite demands by vendors refusing to participate, for a refund of monies deposited in last year's ToM.
Marites Tolits has been luring sponsors and vendors by trumpeting the allegedly increasing number of sponsors, booths and vendors who have signed contracts for the festival in August 2024.
But knowing her tendency to exaggerate and post misleading statements - possibly the reason she could not come forward with her true identity - her postings could be totally untrue. Is this not another form of scam?
Why does SPARC tolerate her nonsense if it's really committed to elevating the community? Is the alias her escape hatch to evade accountability? Indeed, it does give her basis to claim "plausible deniability".
One example was her unverified claim that half-a-million people attended the 2023 ToM which SPARC had mounted in Little Manila. I long suspected that the "artists" in SPARC are con artists, but I digress. That story is for another time.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Marites Tolits was probably relying on the historical fact that the number of ToM attendees had progressively risen each year from August 2014 to August 2019, ToM's last person-to-person event, which was just three months before COVID-19 struck.
SPARC is somewhat engaged now in brushing off ToM's legacy. The familiar image of a driver beckoning passengers to his postwar jeepney rendered by Philippine Consul Bolivar "Bing" Bao has been replaced by a non-artistic drawing of a multicolored hybrid.
Maybe, just maybe, it's an attempt by ToM's so-called founder, Rolly Mangante, to distance himself from the Philippine Consulate where the concept of ToM originated and where he worked as a driver.
Mangante, according to knowledgeable sources within SPARC, is currently embroiled in a word war with a former ToM official that he had junked once he had secured a contract with SPARC to handle ToM for three years.
The official has been prying into ToM for its inability or refusal to pay back vendors hesitant to join ToM in August. (Copyright 2024. All Rights Reserved).
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