Game Show Stampede

image from inq7.net

My keyboard is busted, but i'll struggle to type letter by letter through my on-screen keyboard :O My heart just really drowned in a pool of helplessness when I heard about this news through my sister and I really want to write about it-even just a few thoughts...

Its heart-boggling to realize that the incident perfectly mirrors almost all aspects of poverty - ours and on a global scale. I have extreme guilt soaped all over my entire being- my life with all of its few blessings (which I take for granted often) compared to the victims who most likely used up all of their savings or pehaps borrowed some money to buy one-way tickets to manila hoping to bring home cash. Well now, they neither have no money, no trip home, and for the 74, no more lives to live, leaving their families all the more poorer.

How poor are we to run like animals to ge a chance to have money? I read a relevant article about the world's deadliest stampedes in the past 2 decades. Most of the reasons for these stamede were religious fanaticism and sports. None about poverty-compelled mass hysteria.

It was just appropriate for the president to drop by so she could see for herself the faces of the vctims and their families - i hope she heard them wailing and cryn- to see her failure withhr oath as president. What will her commited 72 hour fact finding mission do to make up for these families' loss? It's never enough just to be there. Yes, she really should have been there, because her govrnment played a giant role in the incident. (or bec. she wants to woo ABS-CBN?-we'll never know)

The local entertainment media are also criminals in the incident by its mere play of carrot-dangling in front of its market-horse-- the majority of the country's population - the poor. They play god onstage when their man intent is profit, never attempting to use their great influence for more important solutions - like using their sitcoms to educate the viewers. Insead, they promote trash talk like racism as comedy (like bubble gang's repetitive jokes about African -pinoys or gays as ugly) or degradation of values even in children (like Going Bulilit). Comedy can be smart! and ethical! Why repeat the same tito-vic and joey slapsticks when its already stale humour?

Media aso fails to promote local culture by promoting soaps from other countries (Koreanovela, Thalia hype) and fail to refresh their plots in local dramas.News are sensationalized and filled with celebrity trash. What option do they provide viewers? TV is religion in the Philippines. In most homes, it is the altar. The poor's morphine from their hunger and struggles. And the TV moguls know that very well.

One last thought,.... it scares me to imagine us, developing countries as the 74 women tramped to death by the power hungry countries in the race for the world's depleting resources.... although, lets not forget that it also mirrrors the same situation in our country.

Philippines begins inquiry of game show stampede
Sat Feb 4, 2006 9:50 PM ET
By John O'Callaghan
Original link to article

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippine government summoned television executives and security officials to an inquiry on Sunday to determine why 74 people died in a stampede for a popular game show giving away cash and prizes.

Saturday's tragedy at a stadium in Manila illustrated the desperation of poor Filipinos hoping to win a small fortune or even a minor prize at the first anniversary celebration of the show "Wowowee", commentators and politicians said.

Most of the victims were elderly women who were crushed against a steel gate at the bottom of a slope or trampled underfoot as a crowd as large as 50,000 surged forward to try to get a coveted seat inside the stadium.

Nearly 400 people were injured.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered a five-member panel to submit a report within 72 hours. The fact-finding body was due to interview executives from the ABS-CBN network, the show's host and the chief of security for the event.

"Was there, in the first place, a failure on the part of the show's producers and the anniversary event organizers to prepare for just such an emergency?" the Philippine Daily Inquirer said in an editorial.

"Was there a failure (a failing shared by many Filipinos, as disaster prevention experts tell us again and again) to imagine that bad things could actually happen?"

Witnesses said chaos broke out when a barricade collapsed as people were being let into the stadium, causing guards to panic and slam shut the gate as the crowd pressed forward.

Manila's police chief, Vidal Querol, said that once people began stumbling on the slope, "they fell like dominoes".
Before being taken to morgues, the bodies had been lined up on the street, their faces covered with towels and newspapers as grieving relatives and friends crouched beside them. Shoes, handbags and half-eaten snacks were scattered on the pavement.

Some tickets had been given out earlier in the week for the anniversary show of "Wowowee", which selects contestants at random from the audience.

But thousands of fans, many of them poor and flocking from the provinces, had camped out for days for a chance at the show's usual jackpot of 1 million pesos ($19,230) and special prizes of a car and a house with land.

"GOOD LESSON"
The head of security at ABS-CBN, Rene Luspo, said his team anticipated the crowd would be unruly and had taken "adequate" precautions but that the crush was "more than we expected".

"We thought we had done all that was humanly possible," he said.

Arroyo's political opponents used the tragedy to take a swipe at her economic record, saying Filipinos would not have risked their lives for prizes on a game show if they had better opportunities.

But even Vice President Noli de Castro, a former newscaster at ABS-CBN, acknowledged that the disaster was a "good lesson" for the network's management and the government.

"Wowowee", on six days a week at midday, is one of the most-watched shows in the Philippines and by communities of Filipinos living abroad.

"We're very poor. I waited for days outside to try our luck," Susan Doblin, who traveled from the central island of Leyte, told Reuters at the stadium on Saturday. "This is a rare chance for us to win a million pesos."