Sun.Star: Ex-Cebu Rep. Sol Abines dies

CEBU CITY - Former congressman Crisologo “Sol" Abines died Monday after suffering a heart attack. He was 60. Reports said Abines was rushed to Cebu Doctor’s Hospital but died before doctors could attend to him. Abines ran for the second district House seat in May but lost to incumbent Rep. Pablo Garcia. Dodjie Abines, his nephew, said the family did not have plans yet on where to bring his body. He said relatives had initially thought of bringing his body to their house in Lahug. Frank Malilong, who once served as the family’s lawyer, said he was told that Abines had just come from a funeral service for a relative of his wife in Dumaguete City. Malilong, who just visited Abines’ wake at the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes in Lahug when interviewed by Sun.Star Cebu, said the family wanted to be left alone for a while “kay bag-o pa kaayo ang hitabo." He said that although he no longer served as his lawyer, they remained close friends. It was only last year that the Sandiganbayan cleared Abines of the homicide case filed against him for the 1999 shooting of a former military man inside a local cockpit in Santander, Cebu. But the anti-graft court’s third division convicted two of Abines’ three co-accused - policeman Roque Paras and barangay captain Jose Cortes. Malilong, in an earlier interview, said Abines “suffered much" from the case and lost not only a fortune but also his political career. Military man Pompeo Bureros was shot dead last March 21, 1999 inside a cockpit in Santander’s Barangay Looc. Five witnesses said Crisologo, with his bodyguards, shot and killed Bureros. At the time he was shot, Bureros was chief security officer of a fishing company co-owned by former Oslob mayor Regino Abines and his late elder brother, Emiliano. The legal battle spanned three years in court and, before that, three years under preliminary investigation. It was marred by the Sandiganbayan 3rd Division’s flip-flopping over the issuance of a warrant that would have sent all four accused to jail for the entire duration of the trial had it not downgraded the case to simple homicide, thus making bail possible. “They really succeeded in demonizing Sol Abines. But I never doubted that he would get his vindication. How can he be guilty when he even got shot?" Malilong said. - Sun.Star