Describing such speculations as "far out," Mr. Estrada made the denial even as sources told The STAR that the intelligence community had prior knowledge of at least one blast site even before the series of bombings on Saturday.
The President also ordered all law enforcement agencies and the Armed Forces yesterday to "go all out and arrest those perpetrators" of the bombing attacks.
"These people have no conscience. We will not stop until we get those perpetrators," he said.
Metro Manila has been in shock since the five Saturday bombings while the number of fatalities increased from seriously injured casualties in different hospitals in the metropolis.
Visiting some bombing casualties at the Jose R. Reyes Memorial Medical Center and Chinese General Hospital, the President strongly denied that he would use the bombings as an excuse to declare a state of emergency or martial law.
"It is not yet time (to declare a state of emergency). That depends on whether things are out of control," the President told reporters.
Opposition lawmakers pinned the blame for the bombings on Mr. Estrada’s administration.
Former senator and now Rep. Ernesto Herrera (Lakas, Bohol) and Rep. Joker Arroyo (Independent, Makati) said in their weekly radio program over dzRH that the administration has the motive and capability to do the bombings.
Herrera said police and military forces loyal to the President could have carried out Saturday’s "acts of terrorism to divert the people’s attention away from Mr. Estrada’s impeachment trial and convincing testimonies about his guilt."
Arroyo, on the other hand, described the bombings as "characteristically Marcosian."
"They are reminiscent of the acts of terror perpetrated by the Marcos regime itself prior to the imposition of martial law in 1972," Arroyo said. "We have seen this before. We have lived through it."
But the President said a tactical alliance between the communist National Democratic Front (NDF) and the extremist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) could be behind the blasts, a charge that Communist Party of the Philippines founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison denied even as he tagged three top police officials as the ones behind the bombings.
In a telephone interview with a radio station in General Santos City, Sison accused Philippine National Police (PNP) Director General Panfilo Lacson, Director Jewel Canson and another unnamed police intelligence official of trying to divert the attention of the people from the impeachment trial.
"Only Mr. Estrada has a political agenda in the bombings," Sison said. "When he said the ones behind (the bombings) are cowards and desperate, it was a self-description... He thinks he can shore himself up through his acting," Sison said in Filipino.
He stressed that only the President has the apparent motive to order the bomb attacks as he is desperate to survive politically. he further predicted that mass protests would also mount in the first quarter of 2001 and that Estrada is moving to suppress them.
Sison, who is now based in the Netherlands, warned that the bombings in Metro Manila were not the last and might even spread to other major urban centers in the country.
Cause-oriented Akbayan Action Party also lamented that Malacañang had already named possible perpetrators of the bombings even before it completed a promised investigation.
"As in any other calibrated and despicable political subterfuge, the public may never learn the real perpetrators of this crime," Akbayan said in statement released by its president Ronald Llamas.
But even as politicians blame each other for the bombings, reliable sources told The STAR that the intelligence community had prior knowledge that terrorists would bomb at least one of the five blast sites.
According to the sources, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has already been following up intelligence reports that certain groups would bomb Plaza Ferguson in Ermita, a few meters in front of the US Embassy.
Nine people were wounded while several buildings were damaged in the Plaza Ferguson bombing a few minutes past noon of Saturday.
NBI field agents were already discreetly monitoring Plaza Ferguson from the night of Friday until the morning of Saturday but they had already left by late Saturday morning a couple of hours before the first bomb blasts at noon.
"They (the NBI agents) were at the site," said The STAR source, who was privy to the NBI surveillance operation. "They were waiting to catch the person who may plant the bomb but nobody came until they left."
The same source said the NBI had actually tried to contact the US Embassy anti-terrorist expert to relay their information but the expert was on holiday in Hawaii.
It could not be determine, however, if the NBI agents also shared the information with their counterparts in the military and police.
But a day prior to the blast, PNP intelligence group head Chief Superintendent Romulo Sales reported that the Abu Sayyaf group is allegedly plotted to stage bombing operations in Metro Manila.
The PNP presented two Abu Sayyaf leaders who were allegedly caught with sketches of potential bomb sites, another The Star source noted.
The sources noted that three of the five blast sites had transportation facilities as targets while the Plaza Ferguson and Pasay Road, Makati bombings appeared to be "mere statements" to sow terror.
Meanwhile, fear dominated Metro Manila as its residents prepared for the traditional New Year’s Eve revelry.
In Pasay City alone, police bomb disposal units were confronted by at least two strange bomb scares at the gates of the Department of Foreign Affairs along Roxas Blvd. and the Jose Abad Santos High School along Taft Ave.
DFA security guards called the Pasay City police bomb disposal unit to check a white plastic bag that was left near the DFA gate at around 9:30 p.m. of Saturday.
Another bag was found to be have been left at the gate of the high school later that evening.
But after tension-filled moments, police found that the bag at the DFA gate contained only three newspaper copies while the bag at the high school contained a water jug filled with firecrackers. – Jess Diaz, Allen Estabillo, Efren Danao and Rainier Allan Ronda