P-Noy bent on ARMM polls postponement

MANILA, Philippines - President Aquino is bent on postponing the August elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) to synchronize it with the voting for congressional and local officials in 2013.

One congressman who attended the meeting with the President in Malacañang said the President would also like to ensure that the new set of ARMM officers to be elected two years from now would not come from traditional political families that used goons, guns and gold in the past to win or monopolize public office.

Those who went to the Palace included ARMM congressmen opposed to the proposed postponement of the August polls.

The source said his colleagues aired their arguments for holding the vote as scheduled but that the President was insistent on postponing it.

Aside from some Muslim lawmakers, congressmen-allies of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo have expressed their opposition to the postponement proposal.

“Our Muslim compatriots are outraged by the President’s blatant scheme to rob them of their right to choose their leaders in the ARMM. Let us not deny them the right of suffrage just to put in place administration subalterns to corner the ARMM vote in 2013,” they said.

Meanwhile, the party-list group Anak Mindanao (AMIN) yesterday supported President Aquino’s position to postpone the ARMM balloting.

AMIN admitted that full reforms cannot be realized “within a span of two years,” but stressed “that the transitional period from now till the national elections in 2013 will provide the opportunity and timeframe for the setting up of mechanisms which will jumpstart the implementation of reforms in the ARMM.”

“This would be a good start in a long process of building a new and progressive ARMM,” it said.

The House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms and the committee on Muslim affairs have approved for plenary consideration a bill postponing ARMM elections to May 2013.