Casino said he supports the people of the ARMM who are against postponing the elections.
“Postponing the polls and replacing elected officials with OICs is not just a violation of the Constitution and the Organic Act, it is outright interference in the ARMM,” Casino said.
The progressive lawmaker also said the Palace must come clean on the real intention on why it wants to have the polls canceled.
“The public deserves to know the real reasons behind the frenzied drive to postpone the polls. Is the reason because the ruling party doesn’t have a decent slate for the ARMM elections?,” he said.
The Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) meanwhile said it is not in favor of the poll postponement, pointing out that it will deny the people of ARMM of their right to electoral exercise.
“Postponing the elections in the ARMM will institutionalize a system of ambivalence and indecisiveness, given that in the 21 years of the autonomous region there have only been five elections and seven postponements. Postponement will deny the people of the region the regular electoral exercise that they deserve,” it added.
Malacañang Wants Polls Postponed
From the onset, Malacañang has said that it favors the postponement of the ARMM elections and have it synchronized with the 2013 national elections. The postponement is among the 17 priority bills Malacañang has submitted to the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac) last month.
Spokesman Edwin Lacierda has said that President Benigno Aquino III wants the ARMM polls to be reset so as to prevent the use of so-called command votes in the region. He said that appointing officers-in-charge after the terms of current ARMM officials expire in August is a measure that would help ensure clean elections and supposedly correct the defects in the current system of governance in the area.
“The ARMM has been a region where there’s such a thing as command votes and it has been manipulated a number of times in the past elections. That is something we need to address. Number two, for cost and efficiency. We wanted the barangay elections to be synchronized with the national elections, it’s also the same purpose to maintain efficiency and save cost in elections so we want it to be synchronized. Like I said, we wanted to prevent the use of the command votes in ARMM, so that’s the reason why there is a move right now to postpone the ARMM elections now and synchronize it with the national elections,” Lacierda said.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has previously announced that it was ready for the ARMM elections in August. It said that P1.8-billion budget will be allocated to cover the all the expenses for the elections.
According to Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr., the Comelec continued to prepare for the scheduled elections in Mindanao, but is also monitoring developments on the postponement bill before investing in costly expenditures. In the meantime, it also continues to negotiate with the company Smartmatic to remedy problems found in the machines which they used in the May 2010 polls. Based on reports, the Comelec is not considering replacing Smartmaticas its service provider for the ARMM polls. 
the posponement of ARMM election is a political payback acording to my perception.if pnoy wanted to appoint mujiv the people in the ARMM will difinitely create conflict specialy the MNLF Or MILF.Because,this group wanted to exercises thier rights of suffrage.so,if pnoy appoint those his ally in politic i think, there will be no peace in the ARMM..pnoy! must be clever to his ally..
mujiv hataman is an ally, a remnant of the ampatuans.. this is not to discredit or malign him. but we just want that none of the ampatuan relatives or allies must come back to power. they all have “utang na loob” to datu andal ampatuan. if pnoy will appoint hataman, he should first make a background check on him–what he did to his campaign managers when he lost in the gubernatorial elections last may 2010. the nbi must investigate this.