A MISHAP, A SLIP-UP
Foreword:
By Mark Anthony Lopez
To us, Regal Oliva is simply a pretender who destroyed himself by his own pathetic attempt at preaching intellectual discourse.
Another day, another delusion unmasked.
🚩 𝗔𝗡𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗥 𝗗𝗔𝗬, 𝗔𝗡𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗥 𝗚𝗔𝗦𝗟𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗔𝗧 𝗣𝗟𝗔𝗬 🚩
He began with a backdrop that belonged to another century. A glass of water placed almost at the center, a room crowded with inherited furniture, a gilded lamp, a saint frozen in vigil, and plants tall enough to hide a conscience. Everything arranged like a confession set on a film noir stage: half-church, half-cabaret. The lighting too deliberate, the shadows too soft. You could almost hear the director whispering, “Action.”
It was all too much and not enough. The apology came in slow, rehearsed syllables. His hands floated midair like they’d been trained by an acting coach, the pauses calibrated to appear thoughtful. Somewhere between the flick of his wrist and the slight quiver of his voice, I realized why the whole thing made me cringe. It was giving Speaker Romualdez energy, that very same self-conscious performance of humility from a man allergic to accountability. The kind that makes you want to say: yawa, stop explaining and start rotting in jail!
He said he was sorry, though the sentence gave him away. The problem is, he didn't apologize for betrayal, or the pivot, or the quiet cruelty of discarding the very people who made him possible. What he regretted was syntax. He apologized for being “poorly written,” for having “wanted to sound poetic,” as if language were the crime and not intention. It was almost a stroke of genius, his deflection, but too bad his followers aren't naive. Klaro kaayo sa TV² ang choreographed sincerity: storyboarded, rehearsed, filmed like a campaign ad for moral reinvention. Brings back that feeling you get when your gut spots the lie before your eyes do.
He didn’t just miss the mark; he dug himself deeper with that backdrop. The whole scene looked like remorse had a stylist: sanctified props, cinematic gloom, and a conscience outsourced to production design. Even the water glass looked complicit.
Regal called his controversial ADARP episode “stirring discourse,” which is code for 𝘐’𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵𝘺, 𝘐’𝘮 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘱. Well, nobody mistook it for reflection... If betrayal once required courage, today it only requires a smartphone and no shame.
That’s what this was, another case of the Filipino betrayal economy. BBM perfected it, Romualdez and Zaldy Co monetized it, and Regal joined the franchise: conviction as content, remorse as rollout. The man sounded like he was auditioning for a seat beside the very people he used to criticize.
Naturally, his followers felt duped, because we were. We weren't angry that he changed his mind; we were angry that he made it look like we were the problem for not agreeing with how he framed the ICC’s decision against FPRRD’s interim release (as moral victory, as though handing over sovereignty to a western tribunal were national cleansing. And then he framed FPRRD as a convicted mass murderer) the exact opposite of how he described him when he was courting an endorsement during the elections. To add insult to injury, he lectured us on logic, on “ad hominem attacks,” on how “civilized discourse” should sound. It was the classic gaslighter’s move: patronize the betrayed until they question their own anger.
It’s almost funny how betrayal here has become a science. It begins as dissonance, mutates into denial, and ends up quantified in engagement metrics. Regal isn’t after truth; he’s running A/B tests on virtue. One day, righteous fury; the next, performative remorse. His conscience, like his content, drops on schedule.
Arang ka sellout sa tanang sellout! People can forgive error; they don’t forgive deceit, especially when deceit comes with hashtags. #LifeIsAGift, he signed off, as if philosophy could disinfect hypocrisy. His remorse was clean to the point of suspicion, like it had been disinfected before delivery. It sounded exactly like a press statement drafted by legal counsel. Spoken like a true legal luminary, trained to confess without ever admitting guilt!
What makes this worse is that betrayal in this country has become an industry. The psychology is simple. Betrayal happens when someone trades reality for image, when self-preservation starts dressing up as principle. The mind edits itself and the conscience negotiates. You start believing the lie because the truth doesn’t trend. And once the applause starts, you confuse noise for validation. That’s how it happens: less by intent, more by algorithm.
I once read that self-respect is the discipline of refusing to lie to yourself. Regal must have missed that line. You can see it in the flicker between his words, the microsecond where the mask almost slips, when even he seems unsure whether he’s still defending justice or just defending his own pivot.
The followers he betrayed aren’t naive. We’re just fed up of watching the same performance with different actors. The same script that begins with loyalty and ends with “sorry, you misunderstood me.” What we understood, actually, was everything: that he was never fighting for us, only performing near us.
In a better world, betrayal would still cost something. But here, it buys jets, choppers, designer bags; the kind of sin that comes in leather and gold. Every peso stolen from a flood-prone barangay ends up stitched into someone’s monogram. In Regal’s case, it bought him reach, trending status, sponsors, maybe even a slot in one of those newbie media outlets. All paid for by the collapse of collective trust.
He’ll post again, of course he will. He’ll call it discourse, offer that practiced half-smile, and wait for the algorithm to kneel. And we, the betrayed, will be told once more to like, share, and blow air into the corpse of his conviction.
But no amount of ring light can hide what everyone already knows: that somewhere between the first word and the last hashtag, conviction got replaced by content. And every time he says “Another Day, Another POV,” what he really means is another sellout, another reel, another test of how much deceit a country still willing to forgive can take.
—Kooks D. | Open Journal | 10212025 | Current Mood: Suspended between schadenfreude and civic grief.
