By: Atty. Gregorio B. Austral, CPA
Austerity with legal meaning
Austerity in a crisis is not about scolding people for celebrating. It is government admitting—plainly—that when power is tight and essentials are at risk, the first obligation is to keep the lights on in what matters: clinics, water systems, schools, and public safety. If that is the context of Bohol’s call to scale down fiestas and public celebrations, the message should be: we are trimming what is optional so we can protect what is necessary.
The legal tradition for this is older than today’s energy headlines. Our law even names the vice: “thoughtless extravagance” in a period of emergency. Government has relied on that policy idea before, citing Article 25 of the Civil Code and directing officials to prevent lavish town fiestas and keep festivities “simple and economical.” Different era, same moral: crisis is when restraint stops being stinginess and becomes responsibility.
But restraint has to be real. If you ask citizens to accept smaller celebrations while government itself continues high-consumption habits—non-essential trips, heavy rentals, excessive electricity use in offices—you lose the public in one news cycle. Austerity works when it is evenhanded and visible: less waste, fewer unnecessary activities, and a clear paper trail showing where the savings went.
There is a practical template for what “real” austerity looks like inside government: suspend non-essential travel and attendance in non-urgent events, pause discretionary hiring of consultants and casuals, rationalize fuel and electricity use, and regulate overtime. That is not theory; it is the day-to-day discipline that makes savings measurable. If celebrations are being scaled down because of an energy crisis, these internal controls should be part of the same story.
The Supreme Court, in the context of economic difficulty, captured why this kind of belt-tightening can be legitimate and persuasive: it is a call to “unity, solidarity and teamwork” and to fiscal restraint in hard times, not a performance for headlines. See Pimentel Jr. v. Aguirre (2000). People cooperate when the goal is intelligible—keep essential services running—and when the burden is shared, including by those in power.
So “small celebrations, big meaning” can be more than a nice line. Keep the meaning; cut the waste: daytime programs, shorter schedules, lower-energy set-ups, tighter limits on rentals and generators, and strict procurement discipline when public money is involved. If austerity is explained as conservation with a purpose—and matched by government’s own restraint—it stops sounding like deprivation and starts reading like competent crisis leadership.