LET THEM EAT BUDGET SPAGHETTI

A Christmas Farce in the Republic of Imaginary Malls

By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — December 5, 2025

I. The Miracle of the P500 Ham

When Government Officials Discover the Fifth Circle of Grocery Hell

Imagine, mga ka-kweba, a Filipino family of four on Christmas Eve. The children are wide-eyed for Noche Buena — that one night when even the poorest table is supposed to shine with a little joy: a slice of ham, sweet spaghetti, maybe a fist-sized queso de bola.

Now imagine a cabinet secretary, cooled by palace air-conditioning and warmed by taxpayer millions, informing that family that all of this can be theirs for five hundred pesos. “It’s doable,” she smiles. “Just strategize.”

Welcome to the Republic of Spreadsheet Empathy, where poverty is a PowerPoint slide and hunger is solved by smaller font sizes.

**“Warning: This Noche Buena may contain traces of broken campaign promises and classified pork.”**

II. Claire vs. Pulong: A Duel of Press Releases

Fought with Excel Sheets and Middle Fingers

The ensuing slap-fight — Palace mouthpiece Claire Castro defending the indefensible with the calm of a hostage negotiator, and Congressman Paolo “Pulong” Duterte roaring that only the corrupt and overfed could believe such nonsense — is being marketed as a policy debate (Inquirer, 1 Dec. 2025).

It is not.

It is political vaudeville performed by two wings of the same vulture, both pretending to care about your Christmas while carving up the republic like lechon.

Yes, technically, if you purchase ham sliced so thin it qualifies as edible origami, spaghetti that tastes like despair, and mayonnaise that separates faster than the UniTeam, the DTI’s sacred spreadsheet balances. Congratulations. You have achieved Noche Buena the way a starving man achieves a five-course meal by licking the menu.

III. The Real Noche Buena Menu

Power, Pork Barrel, and a Side of Vengeance (Hold the Ham)

Let no one pretend this is about ham. Ham is merely the latest prop in the telenovela titled “Marcos-Duterte: Till Death (Preferably Someone Else’s) Do Us Part.”

The true feast consists of:

Confidential funds vanishing faster than a magician’s rabbit
Budget insertions thicker than queso de bola rind
A fugitive televangelist hiding in a bunker while both clans swear they barely know the guy
And whispered drug allegations traded like party favors

Somewhere in the background, a hundred billion pesos mysteriously appears in the budget and everyone acts shocked — shocked! — that the chips taste like pork.

IV. While They Bicker Over Spaghetti

Filipino Families Are Choosing Between Rice and Christmas

Inflation is no longer a headline; it is the third child sleeping on the floor because the milk budget disappeared. Labor groups like KMU are not wrong when they howl that workers are “tightening their belts while the corrupt revel in the people’s stolen taxes.” They are merely shouting the obvious in a country where the obvious must be screamed from rooftops because no one in power is listening.

A real Filipino Christmas should not require a miracle of loaves, fishes, and P500. It should simply be the quiet dignity of a parent who does not have to explain why the ham is smaller this year, why tatay skipped dinner again, why there is nothing under the tree except promises.

V. A Modest Proposal for People Who Have Never Seen the Inside of a Wet Market

(Spoiler: It Involves Eating Your Own Words — and Your Own Cooking)

Stop the circus. Right now.

Publish the mythical P500 receipt — store name, date, cashier number — or admit it was fantasy and eat the resulting meal live on national television. No cuts, no filters, no “strategizing.”
Give every poor family an actual P2,000 holiday subsidy. No ghosts, no middlemen, no “confidential” evaporation. The money is there — it’s currently parked in flood-control projects that don’t control floods.
Livestream a full, independent audit of the 2025 budget, with Paolo Duterte and Martin Romualdez seated side by side, under oath, answering where every extra billion went.
For one month, let every official who defended the P500 budget live on P500 a day for food. No drivers, no bodyguards, no per diems. Just the palengke, the jeepney, and the terror of empty plates.

Because in the end, the P500 Noche Buena is not a budget.

It is a mirror.

And staring back is a political class whose conscience has been sliced so thin you could wrap an entire Christmas ham with it — if only they hadn’t already devoured that, too.

Signing off from the cave, where the only thing “feasible” this Noche Buena is the bitterness in my coffee,
Cheers to the Republic of Empty Plates,

—Barok