P500 Noche Buena
Nothing reveals inequality faster than the moment someone rich tells someone poor how ‘easy’ life can be.
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Nothing reveals inequality faster than the moment someone rich tells someone poor how ‘easy’ life can be.
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Once a year. Christmas. The one day ordinary people hope to feel a little special, a little happy, maybe even a little full. Just once. Every year. And the DTI Secretary, Cristina Roque, said no, you get P500. That’s it. Don’t dream too big for Noche Buena.
I say officials shouldn’t think this small.
Only this government could look at a P500 Noche Buena and think of it as optimism. Everyone else calls it fasting.
Amazing people, we, the Filipinos. We make miracles with nothing. The government? They make nothing with everything.
“Kung tutuusin, sa P500, makakabili na kayo ng ham. Makakagawa ka na ng macaroni salad, makakagawa ka na rin ng spaghetti, depende rin po ‘yan kung ilan ‘yong taong kakain. Mother, father, two children. Lalo na kapag isang anak lang.”
Cute. In her world, the help eats in another room.
Cristina, if P500 is enough, then so is your resignation.
Three slices of ham each. Impossible. Can I have four? That would be very greedy. Very selfish. That’s not the spirit of Christmas. Christmas is about sacrifice. About sharing. About pretending you’re full when you’re not.
The poor are expected to stretch their Christmas budget while the rich stretch our reality: If you can’t make a feast with P500 (read: for a family of four, that’s important), the problem is you. Your budgeting. The diskarte. They’re telling you to lower your standards. That’s the insult.
Don’t complain. Because, if you complain, the DTI, Cristina, the government has to actually do something.
Nothing reveals inequality faster than the moment someone rich tells someone poor how “easy” life can be. Or that the people struggling are just imagining the struggle.
It’s about control. If they can convince you that scraps are enough, the government can convince you not to demand better. And it’s always the high earners talking about budget meals, never the ones eating them.
When officials earning, what, P300,000 a month, say P500 is enough, they’re not ignorant; they’re being unbothered. They only care about the poor when they need your vote or your patience.
They can advise, calculate, but the government cannot, will not, intervene in the quiet suffering they refuse to see.
They don’t underestimate Filipinos as much as overestimate how long we will stay quiet.
I propose that Secretary Cristina’s salary be adjusted to a modest P300 per day, thereby rendering her intimately familiar with the arithmetic of the common Filipino household.
“Strategize”. That’s her advice. Make do with, as if every day we don’t already calculate, improvise, haggle. We’ve been strategizing longer than they’ve been in office. Now, they suggest we do it for Christmas, too, and act surprised that P500 won’t buy a celebration?
We measure joy in crumbs and, somehow, we have learned to call it a celebration. One tiny slice more than yesterday is the only abundance we are allowed. We survive, give a little more than yesterday, and we call it grace, a quiet rebellion against a world that insists scarcity is all we deserve.
