Now his 48-year-old son has become his political heir, carrying on the Marcos name as the provincial governor of Ilocos Norte, his father's old northern Philippines stomping ground.

Ferdinand Marcos Junior, better known by his nickname "Bongbong," makes no apologies for his father's famed excesses during a 20-year rule that ended with a non-violent people power revolt in 1986. "The only mistake he made was that the trust he put in some people may have been misplaced," his son says. "You could see that by what they (some Marcos allies) did after February 1986. They just turned their backs on us."

"In terms of nation-building, I would say he was exactly on the right course. We are still trying to regain the ground we lost since 1986. Look at what is happening to country ... it's just one big mess," he says in his wood-panelled office in the provincial capital Laoag. The walls are adorned with framed photographs of his family -- though none of his father.

Of slight stature and with a hint of his late father's accent, Bongbong Marcos even wears the same cut of short-sleeved white shirts favored by "the old man", as he refers to him. But there the comparisons end.

The son does not aspire to be like his father, though he admits he learned many of his instincts from him.

"We are two different people. My father's main talent was in politics and he was the ultimate politician. I don't know if I'm as good as he was. I know I've learned some lessons, but I don't know if I could pull off some of the things that I know he pulled off. There are many stories that I only learned about my father since I became governor," he says without elaborating.

Bongbong Marcos is now in his third three-year term as governor of poor, largely agricultural Ilocos Norte, for which he ran unopposed, after serving a single term in the House of Representatives and a failed bid for a seat in the Senate. He does not rule out a possible run for the presidency himself some day.

"You know, the world of politics is very volatile. We will see what happens," he laughs. "You have to be committed and very determined to become president."

But his political career has come about more though destiny than ambition, he says. "I didn't want to go into politics. I was looking at business but I'm here. That's life -- you cannot predict what will happen."

-- 'Some of the things that I do as governor are unusual' --

Educated at Oxford University and the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, Bongbong Marcos brings a corporate executive's approach to government in this sleepy corner of the Philippines.

"Some of the things that I do as governor are a little bit unusual because I approach things with a corporate mentality," he says. He wants Ilocos Norte, with a population of about half a million, to become a major East Asia tourist destination as well as the gateway to the Philippines for the robust neighboring economies led by China.

Foreign tourists now take direct flights from Taiwan and eastern China into the Laoag airport, and Beijing recently opened a consulate in the provincial capital.

Bernardo Villegas, an economist and vice-president of the University of Asia and the Pacific, a conservative Manila think-tank, rates Bongbong Marcos as one of the most effective local government executives to have emerged in the country in recent years.

"Tourism and agribusiness are very much developed because of his leadership," Villegas says.

The second of three children and the only son, Bongbong Marcos talks little of his early childhood. He was sent to a Roman Catholic boarding school in the Sussex countryside of southeast England at the tender age of 11, soon after his late father won a second presidential term in 1970.

It was a time of political upheaval in the Philippines. His father would padlock Congress, jail thousands of political opponents and impose martial law two years later as communist insurgencies and a Muslim separatist rebellion in the south posed serious challenges to his rule.

Was he upset being packed off to boarding school so young? "Not at all. Boarding school was a good thing," he says.

In turn, Bongbong Marcos sent his eldest son, also 11, to boarding school in England earlier this year.

"It is an environment that allows the boy to grow because there they deal with him as himself, not like here where they would treat him deferentially for being the son of an influential man. So he becomes his own man."

Bongbong says he saw little of his parents during his years in school abroad. His father never visited him at Worth School, and he and his fellow students were only allowed off the campus once every three months.

"Once in a while mother would be there, but we (he and his two siblings, who studied in other England schools) were (mostly) by ourselves. So the three of us became close."

-- 'Now they are the ones who stand accused, not us' --

Less than five years after Bongbong Marcos returned to the Philippines after pursuing a masters degree in business administration at Wharton, the Marcos family was sent packing aboard US military aircraft as a bloodless, military-backed popular uprising ended his father's 20-year rule.

He has nothing to say about the events of 1986 or how he spent his life in exile. He insists there is nothing to apologize for during his father's rule, despite claims his family stole up to 10 billion dollars from the national treasury, with his mother spending a fortune on shoes as well as property and artwork in New York.

There is a hint of Schadenfreude in his voice as he comments on the political woes of incumbent President Gloria Arroyo, who survived an impeachment complaint in Congress in September over alleged election fraud in last year's presidential race.

Her own family members have been accused of the very same sins as the late Marcos, who died in exile in Hawaii in 1989.

"Now they are the ones who stand accused of these things, not us," he says. "Who are the election cheats? Who are the thieves? Them, not us. So their self-declared moral ascendancy has been shown for what it is. The emperor has no clothes."

Married to Louise Araneta, a 46-year-old campaigner for conservation group WWF, Bongbong Marcos has three sons and is proud of his environmental record. Ilocos Norte became the first in the country to put up windmills for power generation after he had rejected proposals to put up a diesel-fired power plant as well as a number of chemical manufacturing ventures.

"In the larger scheme of things it simply does not work anymore to consider doing projects, of putting up businesses, or putting up all kinds of plants if in the long run the environment is destroyed," he says. "You can't say it's a victimless crime when you are cutting down trees."

Unlike his father, he does not play golf and although he went on a skiing holiday abroad three years ago, Bongbong Marcos insists leisure for him means lounging at home and reading the life work of cult science fiction author Joe Haldeman.

After a lifetime in a political fishbowl, he guards his family's privacy tenaciously.

-- 'Do not make your money where you get your votes' --

Home is a secluded property among the sand dunes on the beach front of Laoag, at the end of a deserted road that forks off onto a commercial pig farm, and he drives an old Nissan SUV. Soldiers man a roadblock and unannounced visitors are firmly told to go away. The dunes have since become a fashionable section of Laoag for those with a bit of money.

The governor's monthly pay is a measly 30,000 pesos (about 536 dollars) but the former president's son says "public administration is really a question of changing your ultimate motive from profit to service".

Ferdinand Dumlao, a senior aide and confidant, says the governor did not pursue a business career because most of the family assets are subject to litigation by a government seeking to get back his father's ill-gotten gains.

"I do not invest anything in the province," Bongbong Marcos says. "There is a saying in my family, 'Do not make your money where you get your votes.'"

In 1991, Bongbong Marcos became the first family member to fly back to the Philippines. His mother Imelda soon followed -- and brought her late husband's corpse with her.

"Friends were warning us the people were still angry and we would be run off with machetes if we tried to return. But I told them I would go home and walk the streets alone to show everybody that that's not the case at all," he chuckles.

His mother still faces a clutch of criminal and civil suits, and the Marcos estate is subject to claims by the government and a group of 10,000 victims of alleged torture and other human-rights violations under the Marcos regime.

But her children did not have to face charges, and no family member has spent a night in jail.

Eldest daughter Maria Imelda, known as Imee, has also followed her father's footsteps and now represents the province in the House of Representatives. The third child, Irene Marcos Araneta, leads a private life as the wife of a Manila businessman.

Bongbong Marcos believes history will be kind to his father, who has been denied a state funeral by Arroyo and her predecessors.

"He's the best president according to the survey, what more can I say," he said, referring to a recent poll by Manila-based Social Weather Stations that had the Marcos presidency more popular than the current leadership.

"The anger that was there in 1986 is beginning to go away, so people can see for themselves and compare," he says.

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