07/12/2025
For years, Filipinos have been praised for their strength—the ever-resilient people, able to endure typhoons, floods, inflation, and political blunders with a smile. This image has been repeated so often that it has become a brand, a national tagline even. But beneath the glossy narrative lies a quiet manipulation: romanticizing poverty and resilience has become a convenient shield for the government, a way to celebrate survival while sidestepping the uncomfortable question of why citizens have to struggle in the first place.
The recent controversy over the supposed idea that ₱500 is “enough” for a Noche Buena meal is a clear illustration. Rather than addressing why a Filipino family’s budget has been squeezed so tightly, the conversation subtly shifted toward praising thriftiness, creativity, and “diskarte.” By focusing on how families can “stretch” a small amount, officials and their supporters reframe scarcity as a challenge to be conquered—not a systemic issue demanding intervention. Poverty becomes a test of resourcefulness, not a failure of governance.
This narrative doesn’t merely distort reality; it erases lived experience. A Noche Buena is not just food—it’s tradition, dignity, and the rare chance for joy in a country where many households live paycheck to paycheck. To say that ₱500 is “sapat” for a celebration isn’t encouragement; it is an institutional lowering of expectations, asking Filipinos to accept crumbs while the larger issues—flood control, confidential funds, wages, inflation, food security—remain unaddressed. It’s easier to applaud the poor for making do than to create conditions where making do isn’t necessary.
In feature stories and televised interviews, resilience is often framed as heroism: the mother who survives on one meal a day so her children can eat, the father who walks kilometers to work to save on fare, the child who studies under a streetlight. These stories tug at the heart, but they also sanitize suffering. They divert attention from the systemic neglect that produces these scenarios, turning hardship into feel-good inspiration. The more we glorify resilience, the less accountability we demand.
Filipinos have always been strong, but strength should never be an excuse for governance to be weak. Poverty should not be a photo opportunity, nor resilience a policy strategy. The controversy around the ₱500 Noche Buena is not simply about money—it is about the expectation that citizens should adjust and endure while leaders avoid responsibility. Real progress begins when we stop celebrating survival and start insisting on systems where survival isn’t the benchmark. Only then can resilience become a choice, not a requirement.
