Abenina: No, it wasn’t me

’Twasn’t me.

Former Land Transportation Office (LTO) chief Edgardo Abenina denied yesterday issuing any statement implicating the camp of former President Fidel Ramos in an alleged destabilization campaign against the Arroyo administration.

Abenina, a retired Army brigadier general, was reacting to The STAR story yesterday quoting him as saying he would tell all about the coup plot being hatched by people close to Ramos.

"That’s not true. I didn’t say things like that," Abenina said in an interview with a Manila-based national radio network.

Abenina stressed that he knew nothing about any coup plot. "I don’t know anything about what is happening right now. My knowledge is limited to LTO only," he said.

He said he would call a press conference soon to straighten up things.

In a statement issued last Friday, LTO spokesman Hermogenes Tosino had warned of an alleged Abenina impostor calling up various members of the press to link seven people close to President Arroyo to the Dec. 31 assassination of discharged Army Lt. Baron Cervantes.

"Press releases of the impostor also reached several daily newspapers containing malicious and erroneous facts, which also tend to link Abenina to the death of Cervantes," the statement said.

Tosino branded the disinformation as a "desperate move to destroy" Abenina.

Tosino said someone had been calling up major press offices and introducing himself as Abenina, who had been linked to a series of coup attempts against the Aquino administration in the late ’80s.

"The motive behind this is to put General Abenina in a bad light. They want to tarnish his image," Tosino added.

STAR reporter Jaime Laude maintained, however, that it was Abenina who called him up on the phone at the press office of Camp Crame on Friday to convey his threat to spill the beans on the coup plotters.

Laude said he was very familiar with Abenina’s voice and firmly believed that it was indeed the former LTO chief he was talking to.

He added that he and Abeninan go a long way back, and that they were even together at "EDSA II."

"Somebody could have ordered Abenina to clam up," Laude said.

But a seething Abenina insisted that he did not talk to any reporter on Friday about the alleged coup plot.

The caller also belied reports that the Rebolusyonaryong Alyansang Makabansa (RAM), a military rightist group, picked up the cudgels for his aide, police Superintendent Rafael Cardeno, who was being eyed for possible complicity in the Cervantes killing.

Cardeno, who has been tagged as one of the coup plotters, was reportedly held for questioning at Camp Crame, but denied any involvement in the plot.

During the interrogation, Cardeno claimed that Cervantes had hired a killer to do him in, but vowed to foil the murder plot.

Cervantes was shot dead by a lone gunman as night fell while he was standing by a roadside in Pamplona, Las Piñas, apparently waiting for someone.

Investigators are looking at the possibility that the killing was politically motivated, although they did not rule out other probable motives.

Abenina was unseated recently from the LTO amid a controversy whipped up by Cardeno’s public criticisms of the Arroyo administration. — Jose Rodel Clapano