IMPEACH. Members of student and youth organizations, led by Anakbayan, rip a copy of the Supreme Court decision declaring the impeachment of Sara Duterte unconstitutionalIMPEACH. Members of student and youth organizations, led by Anakbayan, rip a copy of the Supreme Court decision declaring the impeachment of Sara Duterte unconstitutional

[Rappler’s Best] The Davao Boys and the Ilocano cronies

2026/02/16 18:00
Okuma süresi: 6 dk

Did you find yourselves caught in the Valentine rush over the weekend? In this story, we bring you to Dangwa, the flower market that has outlasted the ravages of weather and time.

For many Filipinos, however, Saturday, February 14, was a gift that they did not see coming: the release of the names of the eight alleged indirect co-perpetrators of detained former president Rodrigo Duterte in the crimes against humanity charges that he’s facing at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. 

The pre-trial of Duterte, or confirmation of charges hearing, begins next Monday, February 23, and it will last the entire week. Jodesz Gavilan walks us through what is expected to happen in those five days here.

Six of Duterte’s eight alleged co-perpetrators are the so-called “Davao Boys,” who are either from Davao or had spent critical times of their career there. 

  • Senators Bong Go and Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa both hail from the Davao region, their careers growing exponentially after Duterte became president and culminating in their impressive Top 5 showing in the 2022 senatorial elections. When they ran for reelection in 2025, Go landed No 1 and Dela Rosa at No 3. 
  • In the ICC prosecutor’s document containing charges, or DCC, Go and former Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Dela Rosa were accused of using the Davao police to kill suspected criminals. 
  • Another former PNP chief, Vicente Danao, whose stars as a cop rose in Davao, is also on the list. Here’s a profile. 
  • Yet another former PNP chief, the late Camilo “Pikoy” Cascolan who was not from Davao but held critical posts in the region, is also on the list. He was Dela Rosa’s reported sidekick in crafting Oplan Double Barrel, the blueprint that turned their Davao kill template into a nationwide project. He died in 2023; here’s a profile.
  • Two others on the list were also law enforcers in Davao: former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) chief Dante Gierran, who was NBI agent in the city for nine years, and former drug enforcement agency head Isidro Lapeña, who had served both as city and regional police chief in Davao. Read more about them here.

If Duterte has his Davao Boys with blood on their hands, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. also has his own Ilocano cronies who were showered with fat government contracts.

What rankles us is that Malacañang seems to be turning a blind eye to what, at the very least, are conflict-of-interest situations involving these Ilocanos.

  • In this exclusive report, Lian Buan zeroes in on one property in Las Vegas worth $1.2 million that Marcos ally Lucille Angelus Guillen-Yapo, mayor of a Cagayan town, transferred to a US-based company which she also owns — a month after the flood control scandal broke. 
  • The Guillens, a political dynasty in Piddig, Ilocos Norte, province of the Marcoses, are staunch allies of the First Family, in particular Ilocos Norte Congressman Sandro Marcos, the President’s eldest. 
  • Eddie Guillen is currently the chief of the National Irrigation Administration. With him leading the agency, NIA awarded at least six contracts to a company owned by his relatives, a Rappler investigation found out. His wife Gina is mayor of Piddig. In the last decade, three companies that belong to their clan have been the top contractors of the public works department. 
  • Another Ilocano and longtime aide of Marcos, Jose Cadiz Jr., is linked to a construction company that has cornered DPWH contracts in Ilocos Norte and is owned by his 21-year-old son. Cadiz resigned in December as justice undersecretary after Lian Buan’s exposé on him. But a month later, the President decided to retain him in the justice department.
  • And let’s not forget Manuel Bonoan, another Ilocano who was Marcos’ first pick as secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). The President dragged his feet before letting go of Bonoan. A body formed by Marcos to investigate the scandal has recommended the filing of graft and other administrative complaints against him. When he was DPWH head, the department awarded a multi-billion contract to a company owned by the business partner of his daughter.

As cynics of this benighted land would say, weather-weather lang ‘yan. Unless the President can prove them wrong, of course.

Here are some of Rappler’s bests that you shouldn’t miss:

Victor Barreiro Jr. looks into the Epstein files that show how the late convict tried to clean up his image by outsourcing the work to Filipinos. A congressional probe into the matter is being eyed.

Marites Vitug asks: Is China out to weaken Marcos? 

Jairo Bolledo explains a landmark Supreme Court decision about same-sex couples being co-owners of their properties.

Bea Cupin sits down with maritime law expert Jay Batongbacal, who chides Senator Rodante Marcoleta for his misplaced and controversial statements on the West Philippine Sea. Watch the full Rappler Talk episode here.

Jee Geronimo interviews Jim Simon, CEO of Oceana marine conservation group, and its vice president Von Hernandez, about the Philippine fisheries’ sector and lessons the world can learn from the country’s oceans.


At this regular dating event, people pitch their friends to potential lovers

It hopes to offer a different experience as it takes things offline.

Indoors, Restaurant, Cafe

From hole-in-the-wall to global dimsum star: How joining the Jollibee Group changed Tim Ho Wan

Tim Ho Wan has doubled its store network in Hong Kong and now has a total of 85 stores across various markets in the world.

End of an era: PH’s oldest bus line, Philtranco, closes after 112 years

This ends 112 years of transporting millions of Filipinos.

Makati city subway project billboard

What the Makati–Infradev settlement means for the city’s subway plan

City hall effectively takes full control of the venture.

Protest at the Supreme Court for Sara Duterte impeachment

LIST: What are the issues raised in Sara Duterte impeachment complaints?

The complaints share numerous arguments, from Duterte’s alleged mishandling of confidential funds, to her apparent threats to the life of President Marcos and his family.

Worsening floods? Stop Manila Bay reclamations, say groups

Reclamations at the Manila Bay are revived as an issue, with one petition reaching Malacañang.


– Rappler.com

Rappler’s Best is a weekly newsletter of our top picks delivered straight to your inbox every Monday. Visit rappler.com/newsletters to subscribe.

The views expressed by the writer are his/her own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Rappler.

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Facts Vs. Hype: Analyst Examines XRP Supply Shock Theory

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Prominent analyst Cheeky Crypto (203,000 followers on YouTube) set out to verify a fast-spreading claim that XRP’s circulating supply could “vanish overnight,” and his conclusion is more nuanced than the headline suggests: nothing in the ledger disappears, but the amount of XRP that is truly liquid could be far smaller than most dashboards imply—small enough, in his view, to set the stage for an abrupt liquidity squeeze if demand spikes. XRP Supply Shock? The video opens with the host acknowledging his own skepticism—“I woke up to a rumor that XRP supply could vanish overnight. Sounds crazy, right?”—before committing to test the thesis rather than dismiss it. He frames the exercise as an attempt to reconcile a long-standing critique (“XRP’s supply is too large for high prices”) with a rival view taking hold among prominent community voices: that much of the supply counted as “circulating” is effectively unavailable to trade. His first step is a straightforward data check. Pulling public figures, he finds CoinMarketCap showing roughly 59.6 billion XRP as circulating, while XRPScan reports about 64.7 billion. The divergence prompts what becomes the video’s key methodological point: different sources count “circulating” differently. Related Reading: Analyst Sounds Major XRP Warning: Last Chance To Get In As Accumulation Balloons As he explains it, the higher on-ledger number likely includes balances that aggregators exclude or treat as restricted, most notably Ripple’s programmatic escrow. He highlights that Ripple still “holds a chunk of XRP in escrow, about 35.3 billion XRP locked up across multiple wallets, with a nominal schedule of up to 1 billion released per month and unused portions commonly re-escrowed. Those coins exist and are accounted for on-ledger, but “they aren’t actually sitting on exchanges” and are not immediately available to buyers. In his words, “for all intents and purposes, that escrow stash is effectively off of the market.” From there, the analysis moves from headline “circulating supply” to the subtler concept of effective float. Beyond escrow, he argues that large strategic holders—banks, fintechs, or other whales—may sit on material balances without supplying order books. When you strip out escrow and these non-selling stashes, he says, “the effective circulating supply… is actually way smaller than the 59 or even 64 billion figure.” He cites community estimates in the “20 or 30 billion” range for what might be truly liquid at any given moment, while emphasizing that nobody has a precise number. That effective-float framing underpins the crux of his thesis: a potential supply shock if demand accelerates faster than fresh sell-side supply appears. “Price is a dance between supply and demand,” he says; if institutional or sovereign-scale users suddenly need XRP and “the market finds that there isn’t enough XRP readily available,” order books could thin out and prices could “shoot on up, sometimes violently.” His phrase “circulating supply could collapse overnight” is presented not as a claim that tokens are destroyed or removed from the ledger, but as a market-structure scenario in which available inventory to sell dries up quickly because holders won’t part with it. How Could The XRP Supply Shock Happen? On the demand side, he anchors the hypothetical to tokenization. He points to the “very early stages of something huge in finance”—on-chain tokenization of debt, stablecoins, CBDCs and even gold—and argues the XRP Ledger aims to be “the settlement layer” for those assets.He references Ripple CTO David Schwartz’s earlier comments about an XRPL pivot toward tokenized assets and notes that an institutional research shop (Bitwise) has framed XRP as a way to play the tokenization theme. In his construction, if “trillions of dollars in value” begin settling across XRPL rails, working inventories of XRP for bridging, liquidity and settlement could rise sharply, tightening effective float. Related Reading: XRP Bearish Signal: Whales Offload $486 Million In Asset To illustrate, he offers two analogies. First, the “concert tickets” model: you think there are 100,000 tickets (100B supply), but 50,000 are held by the promoter (escrow) and 30,000 by corporate buyers (whales), leaving only 20,000 for the public; if a million people want in, prices explode. Second, a comparison to Bitcoin’s halving: while XRP has no programmatic halving, he proposes that a sudden adoption wave could function like a de facto halving of available supply—“XRP’s version of a halving could actually be the adoption event.” He also updates the narrative context that long dogged XRP. Once derided for “too much supply,” he argues the script has “totally flipped.” He cites the current cycle’s optics—“XRP is sitting above $3 with a market cap north of around $180 billion”—as evidence that raw supply counts did not cap price as tightly as critics claimed, and as a backdrop for why a scarcity narrative is gaining traction. Still, he declines to publish targets or timelines, repeatedly stressing uncertainty and risk. “I’m not a financial adviser… cryptocurrencies are highly volatile,” he reminds viewers, adding that tokenization could take off “on some other platform,” unfold more slowly than enthusiasts expect, or fail to get to “sudden shock” scale. The verdict he offers is deliberately bound. The theory that “XRP supply could vanish overnight” is imprecise on its face; the ledger will not erase coins. But after examining dashboard methodologies, escrow mechanics and the behavior of large holders, he concludes that the effective float could be meaningfully smaller than headline supply figures, and that a fast-developing tokenization use case could, under the right conditions, stress that float. “Overnight is a dramatic way to put it,” he concedes. “The change could actually be very sudden when it comes.” At press time, XRP traded at $3.0198. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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