‘Godfather’ Ensures Vote for Marcos

The old man, a barrel on bandy legs, wearing running shoes, shorts and a soft-brim hat, broke his monologue to consider the question: When had he last talked with the president?

“Just three days ago,” he told his visitor. “He called from Malacanang to ask how things were here. What did I tell him? Cebu is under control.”

Every candidate needs comforting assurance now and then in a hard-fought election campaign. President Ferdinand E. Marcos, the beleaguered man in Malacanang Palace, got it from Ramon M. Durano, the man who runs a place where Marcos will not lose.

He Owns the City

The 80-year-old Durano is often depicted in the Philippine press as a warlord on the island of Cebu, a key province in the hopes of opposition candidate Corazon Aquino.

“But don’t call me that,” Durano said. “I’m not a warload. Call me ‘the godfather.’ ”

He is that, at least. He is the power in northern Cebu, and he owns this city lock, stock and votes. In the city of Cebu, an opposition stronghold to the south, they call the north Durano country, and the old man thinks that is a fair assessment.

“In this place there is no party; there is Ramon Durano,” he said.

Durano, who has shunned the press in recent years as his notoriety grew under Marcos, has been slightly more open in this campaign. He relishes the image of the godfather, the tough guy, and he polished it with a string of one-liners:

“I am only a soldier but I can command many generals.”

“Fear is not in my dictionary.”

“Age does not matter if matter does not age.”

But while Durano plays on the caricature, the power is real. No Cebu municipal or provincial official makes a major appointment without Durano’s blessing, political insiders say.

“We talk,” said Cebu Mayor Ronald Duterte, a member of Marcos’ ruling KBL party.

Few Guerrillas Around

Guerrillas of the Communist-led New People’s Army, active elsewhere in Cebu, are rarely seen in Durano country.

“I respect them and they respect me,” the old man said. “Besides, if there’s a new face in Danao, they will come tell me--the barangay captains, even the old women.”

Barangays are neighborhoods, and the captains are the nominally nonpartisan officials.

Durano was a member of the national Congress from 1949 to 1972, when it was dissolved under martial law. Now his only office is as barangay captain of Esperanza on the nearby island of Camotes. He owns sugar lands there.

In Danao, he owns almost everything: the Durano sugar refinery, the Universal cement plant, a bakery, a print shop, the ice plant, the sawmill, a drydock and a factory where paper bags are made for the cement plant. The Durano coal mines, the original source of his wealth, are now owned by his seven children.

Warning and instructional signs at his plants are signed with the initials C.I.C., for commander in chief. He has 5,000 employees, Durano says, and one of every five citizens of Danao is dependent on his enterprises.

The other major source of income in Danao is a cottage industry that produces illegal handguns. “Gunshots are always going off in the barrios of Danao,” said a Cebu priest who visits here. “It’s just the gun makers testing a new pistol.”

Durano has engineered a legislative measure that will legitimize the gun business, making the Philippine armed forces a potential customer. At present, most of the weapons are sold to locals, though some go to Japanese gangsters.

Most of Durano’s workers own their own homes. They get loans from the Durano-owned Danao Development Bank, the only one in town.

Durano’s wife was mayor for 16 years. Now a son occupies the office. Barrio roads are paved with concrete and are superior to the rutted streets of Manila. They are a gift from the old man. He has also built a free hospital, a home for the aged and several churches for the town.

From Cradle to Grave

“I take care of my people from the cradle to the grave,” he boasts.

For the poor, at the end, he provides a free coffin, a Ramon Durano Foundation hearse--a small truck bearing the words “The Last Trip Home”--and a free burial in a cemetery he laid out.

On his birthday, Dec. 24, Durano holds court, passing out envelopes containing cash to long lines of townspeople.

There is a price for all this, of course, and it is paid at election time.

“I don’t tell people how to vote; I don’t have to,” said the man who will deliver northern Cebu and probably, with money and influence, a majority of the provincial vote to Marcos on Feb. 7.

Asked how many votes Marcos would get in Danao, Durano said, “One hundred per cent.” Nudged by a supporter, he added, “Make that 95 or 96%.”

Opposition leaders accuse him of masterminding wholesale vote fraud in the province in the 1984 parliamentary elections, but he denies it. There is no need for cheating in Durano country. He has earned the loyalty of the people, or bought it with good works.

When that fails, said a Cebu reporter who once lived in Danao, Durano brings out the verbal stick, warning that jobs could be lost if his candidate does not get the votes, or that there might be trouble with the supply of electricity to a voter’s home.

“Every day is election day to me,” Durano says.

Well Protected

The reputed warlord has plenty of security, a mob if not an army. At his home on the beachfront, where the walls are lined with pictures of Durano and Marcos together, both as young men in the Congress and in more recent times, the gates are guarded by men carrying rifles.

“I keep 10 or 12 men around the house,” he says. With three shifts a day, that means 30 armed men or more, plus the security force at his plants.

Durano also supports a workers’ group, the Free Workers Assn. His daughter, Rosemarie (Judy) Durano, who runs his Insular Security and Investigations and its 220 watchmen, said she once called her father for advice on how to handle a picketing problem in the city of Cebu by a rival union.

“He sent down three big trucks from the sugar mill filled with ugly men carrying two-by-twos,” she said.

What would happen if someone tried to organize his companies, which are non-union and pay the minimum wage of about $1.50 a day? “They wouldn’t dare,” the daughter said.

She is a favorite of her father--he calls her “the bravest man in my family”--and reputedly an accurate marksman. In a neat zippered bag, she carries a German-made 9-millimeter P-38 automatic. Showing a reporter the magazine, she said: “These are hollow-point bullets, very expensive here. I get mine in the States.”

Her father, she says, has given her a new nickname, “Rambotita.”

Question of Succession

Durano is spry despite his years, but in Cebu there is speculation on his successor as chief of the clan. Judy’s name is mentioned, along with that of his youngest son, Ramon III, a member of the Congress. (Ramon is a common name among the Duranos. There are two among his children--Junior and the Third--and in the next generation it is up to Ramon VII.)

Durano is thinking about the question of succession in the Marcos family. “Frankly he (Marcos) has been in office too long,” Durano said.

But the alternative in this election, opposition candidate Corazon Aquino, whom he called “an ignorant woman,” is not what he wants, he said. “I’m not a fair-weather politician,” he added.

His control was made evident earlier this month when Aquino, after a tumultuous welcome in the city of Cebu, ventured north to Danao, and here only a small crowd awaited her, most of the people wearing Marcos T-shirts.

Durano said he has told Marcos: “Your place in history is assured. Now is a time to be broad-minded and tolerant.

“We’re preparing Imee (Marcos’ youngest daughter) for president,” he said. “She has the brains.” He did not say who “we” includes.

What does he get for his fealty to Marcos? Durano says he is just trying to do what is best for the country. But according to several sources in Cebu, his friendship with the powers in Manila was repaid in his early years with access to Japanese war-reparations money, which allowed him to acquire the cement factory, and more recently with a Japanese bank loan on soft terms, approved by the government export-import bank, which has allowed him to refurbish it.

He is a man who quotes St. Augustine, delivers the votes and, according to him, lives by one of his favorite adages: “When you’re outsmarted, don’t get mad, get even.”