No Iloilo solon is involved in DPWH flood-control projects anomaly?

By Alex P. Vidal 

“When you don’t take a stand against corruption you tacitly support it.” — Kamal Haasan

LET’S hope no Iloilo solon is involved in the ongoing “sweeping” investigation called by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on the multi-billion pesos flood-control projects anomaly.

The connivance among several corrupt members of the House of RepresentaTHIEVES, SINators, DPWH officials led by crooked district engineers and private contractors, is now getting crystal clear, and it has become a case of “it takes more-than-two to tango.”

From multi-million pesos to multi or hundreds of billions of pesos.

The Philippines was ranked 114th out of 180 countries, with a score of 33 out of 100, indicating a perception of significant corruption, according to Transparency.org’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).

The CPI measures how corrupt a country’s public sector is perceived to be, with 100 being very clean and 0 being highly corrupt.

We’re sure loquacious Sen. Joel Villanueva, etcetera will have their hands full once the chaffs are separated from the grains, as well as other district and party-list congresspeople, who must have amassed a fortune from the colossal scam at the expense of the taxpayers.

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We can’t imagine our Iloilo congresspeople being dragged into the controversy and subjected into investigations like criminals.

It was reported that 86 percent of people in the Philippines believe that government corruption is a big problem.

Additionally, 19 percent of public service users paid a bribe in the past 12 months, according to Transparency.org.

Despite the high perception of corruption, the Philippines recently ranked as No.1 in Asia for its transparency in the budget process in the 2023 Open Budget Survey.

But Iloilo leaders are known to be “clean” if not immaculate. No lawmaker or Ilonggo holding national position has brought shame and embarrassment to Western Visayas in this magnitude in recent memory.

As long they there were no flood-control budget allocations for the Western Visayas congresspeople last year and this year, the possibility that they handpicked their own contractors for the “ghost” if not substandard projects would be far-fetched.

This is the type of anomaly no higher elected or even appointed public official can survive once a full-blown investigation has been unraveled, now that no less than the President has given the imprimatur to probe the mess and leave no stone unturned.

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WHAT DID WE USE FOR IDS BEFORE PHOTOS? In a world without cameras, biometric databases, or even consistent spelling, identifying individuals could be quite a complex challenge, History Facts explained August 31.

Before photography helped fix identity to an image, societies reportedly developed a range of creative methods to determine who someone was— a task that could be surprisingly difficult, especially when that someone was outside their home community.

From scars to seals to signatures, here’s how identity was tracked before photo IDs, History Facts said.

It explained further: A name was the most basic marker of identity for centuries, but it often wasn’t enough.

In ancient Greece, to distinguish between people with the same first name, individuals were also identified by their father’s name.

For example, an Athenian pottery shard from the fifth century BCE names Pericles as “Pericles son of Xanthippus.”

In ancient Egypt, the naming convention might have reflected the name of a master rather than a parent.  But when everyone shared the same name — as in one Roman Egyptian declaration in 146 CE, signed by “Stotoetis, son of Stotoetis, grandson of Stotoetis” — things could get muddled. To resolve this, officials turned to another strategy: describing the body itself.

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Detailed physical descriptions often served as a kind of textual portrait. An Egyptian will from 242 BCE describes its subject with remarkable specificity: “65 years old, of middle height, square built, dim-sighted, with a scar on the left part of the temple and on the right side of the jaw and also below the cheek and above the upper lip.”

Such marks made the body “legible” for identification. In 15th-century Bern, Switzerland, when authorities sought to arrest a fraudulent winemaker, they didn’t just list his name.

They issued a description: “large fat Martin Walliser, and he has on him a silk jerkin.” Clothing — then a significant investment and deeply symbolic — became part of someone’s identifying characteristics. A person’s outfit could mark their profession, social standing, or even their city of origin.

Uniforms and insignia served a similar function, especially for travelers. In the late 15th century, official couriers from cities such as Basel, Switzerland, and Strasburg, France, wore uniforms in city colors and carried visible badges.

Pilgrims and beggars in the late Middle Ages and beyond were also required to wear specific objects — such as metal badges or tokens — that marked their status and origin. Some badges allowed the bearer to beg legally or buy subsidized bread, offering both practical aid and visible authentication.

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Seals also served as powerful proxies for the self. From Mesopotamian cylinder seals to Roman oculist stamps and medieval wax impressions, these identifiers could represent both authority and authenticity.

In medieval Britain, seals were often made of beeswax and attached to documents with colored tags. More than just utilitarian tools, seals were embedded with personal iconography and could even be worn as jewelry.

In many cases, travelers also had to carry letters from local priests or magistrates identifying who they were.

By the 16th century, such documentation became increasingly essential, and failing to carry an identity paper could result in penalties.

This passport-like system of “safe conduct” documents gradually started to spread. What began as a protection for merchants and diplomats evolved into a bureaucratic necessity for everyday people.

As written records became more widespread in medieval Europe, so did the need for permanent, portable identifiers.

Royal interest in documenting property and legal rights led to the proliferation of official records, which in turn prompted the spread of literacy.

Even as early as the 13th century in England, it was already considered risky to travel far without written identification.

The signature eventually emerged as a formal marker of identity, especially among literate elites, and was common by the 18th century.

Still, in a mostly oral culture, signatures functioned more as ceremonial gestures than verification tools.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)