Estrada denies hand in any coup attempt

Don’t look at me.

Ousted President Joseph Estrada denied yesterday that he and his supporters were behind alleged destabilization plots against the Arroyo administration.

"I do not have time for that and I am busy with cases right now," Estrada said in a telephone interview. "I only hear of these reports on radio and the television."

Describing coup rumors as a "spin," former Estrada aide Sen. Panfilo Lacson accused the Arroyo administration yesterday of linking him to an "imagined" plot to divert the public’s attention from the Senate investigations on First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo’s alleged involvement in the reported misue of P250 million belonging to the Phi-lippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.

However, Arroyo told reporters yesterday Lacson was "obviously getting desperate to cover up the real issue" that he had made those "irrational" allegations.

Estrada said it was impossible for him to plot against President Arroyo because he was detained at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City, awaiting his trial for plunder before the Sandiganbayan.

Lacson said the "Black October" coup that was supposed to be launched this month is a "product of the wild imagination" of Central Luzon police director Chief Superintendent Reynaldo Berroya as a means of "ingratiating" himself with Malacañang.

"There are two reasons why Berroya is doing this," he claimed. "Either he wants to be extended as regional director of Central Luzon, where he gets P3 million from jueteng operators, or he desperately wants to be the next Philippine National Police chief."

Berroya is "bootlicking" the Arroyo administration by trying to protect Mr. Arroyo from the public eye in the course of the Senate investigations, he added.

As chief of task force Habagat of the defunct Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC), Lacson arrested Berroya as principal suspect in the kidnapping of Taiwanese Jack Chou in 1993.

Berroya was later convicted by a regional trial court and served time at the National Penitentiary in Muntinlupa City.

During the 1998 presidential elections, the Supreme Court ordered Berroya released after finding out that the evidence against him was not enough to prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

National Security Adviser Roilo Golez told reporters yesterday authorities were monitoring the activities of an obscure paramilitary group called the Urban Poor Liberation Front (UPLF).

For the the past two months, UPLF members have been receiving military training from a right-wing Army colonel, he added.

Golez said authorities "are not taking any chances" and that the military leadership has already warned the unidentified colonel that he would face sanctions if he persisted.

The UPLF was the paramilitary arm of the People’s Movement Against Poverty (PMAP), a non-government organization supporting Estrada, he added.

But Estrada denied any knowledge of paramilitary groups and chided the government for filing rebellion charges against PMAP leader Ronald Lumbao, who marshalled thousands last May in a violent march to Malacañang to unseat Mrs. Arroyo.

"I am surprised why he was charged," he said. "Government should have also gone after politicians who had joined the march."

Sen. Edgardo Angara branded as "pure fiction" allegations that some opposition leaders are involved in a destabilization plot against the Arroyo administration.

"The rumors of coup can only come from enemies within, from allies of the Arroyo administration who have to resort to alarmist scenarios to cover up for their poor governance," he said.

Angara said the opposition is focused on parliamentary struggle to uphold its mandate in Congress to pass laws that would advocate reforms.

"All these coup talks are hatched by (Mrs.) Arroyo’s people right in her own backyard," he said.

Angara said the opposition’s agenda is to strengthen the country’s political and economic institutions, and that they are cooperating with the majority in the Senate.

"There is much to be done in rebuilding the nation," he said.

Mr. Arroyo said he has already appeared twice before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and that he had publicly asked to be investigated immediately.

"Senator Lacson appeared only once in the Senate probe and only after several weeks of hearings on his alleged involvement in the illegal drugs trade," he said.

Mr. Arroyo said Lacson has rejected the challenges of witness Angelo "Ador" Mawanay and Col. Victor Corpus, chief of the Intelligence Services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP), to submit to a lie-detector test and to sign a waiver that would allow Corpus to sift through his bank accounts.

"The senator’s illogical opinion applies to the solon himself and not to me," he said. "And why would we start coup rumors? Why would we destabilize our own administration?" – Aurea Calica, Efren Danao