The Fire Horse and the Paper Tiger

If you walk through the narrow, bustling arteries of Binondo this week, you will feel a palpable electricity. The scent of incense and tikoy hangs heavy in the air, and the streets are a riot of crimson and gold. This 17 February, we usher in the Year of the Fire Horse — a zodiac sign characterized by blazing speed, unbridled passion, and volatile change. In the Filipino Chinese tradition, the Fire Horse is a creature of high stakes; it can carry you to unprecedented heights of prosperity or gallop headlong into chaos.

But as I navigated the crowds buying horse-themed charms and lucky coins, I couldn’t help but notice a jarring irony. While we collectively pray for “luck” and “smooth income,” our national reality remains snagged on the jagged edges of a reenacted budget. For the first weeks of 2026, the wheels of our government are spinning on the ghost of last year’s funds. It is a classic “Paper Tiger” — a fierce-looking administrative delay that presents itself as a mere procedural hiccup, but hides the deeper, uglier rot of political deadlock and “allocable” maneuvering.

This brings us back to our 2026 theme: The Conscience of the Code. We are a nation quick to embrace the digital future and the “luck” of a new lunar cycle, yet we remain sluggish in correcting the “bad luck” of systemic inefficiency. We cannot ride the Fire Horse into a prosperous future if our stirrups are broken by the same “soft pork” and opaque line items that haunted us in 2025.

The people’s budget is a playground for the “Modern Rogue.” It allows for the redirection of funds with less scrutiny, turning the national treasury into a personal pork giniling once again. Radical Accountability in 2026 means demanding that the General Appropriations Bill is treated not as a mere digital spreadsheet of projects, but as a sacred moral contract between the state and the taxpayer.

If the Fire Horse represents speed, let it be the speed of service delivery — the lightning-fast release of agricultural subsidies to our drought-stricken farmers and the immediate repair of our crumbling public schools. Let it not be the speed at which billions vanish into the “unprogrammed funds” that no citizen can track.

We must sustain the Unbreakable Thread of Filipino resilience by being more than just spectators of our own governance. Luck is not something that falls from the sky or comes from a jade figurine; luck, in a democracy, is the result of relentless vigilance. We must be the “Conscience” that ensures the “Code” of our national budget is written with the ink of integrity, not the disappearing ink of political convenience.

As the dragon dances weave through the streets of Manila, let them remind us of our power. The Fire Horse is a powerful beast, but it must be tamed by a rider with a clear vision and a steady hand. This year, let us resolve to stop being intimidated by the “Paper Tigers” of bureaucracy. Let us demand a 2026 that moves with the passion of the horse and the transparency of the light. After all, a nation that waits for luck usually ends up with leftovers. A nation that demands accountability, however, builds its own destiny.