Manifesto to Support for Postponement of Elections in ARMM

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A March 16, 2011 press release from the Office of the Presidential Spokesperson

As a demonstration of increasing support for Malacañang’s proposal to postpone elections in the ARMM, local government officials from Sulu led by Governor Abdusakur M. Tan sent a signed manifesto to President Aquino expressing their “cognizance and awareness of the true state of affairs in the ARMM” and “full support and concurrence for the postponement of the ARMM elections.”

The officials cited the need for the “intervention of the President and the Central Government,” and held that there “should not be a hold-over status of incumbent ARMM elective officials at the expiration of their present term of office.” It called for the “President (to) exercise his authority by appointing capable personalities.”

The manifesto was signed by a total of 30 local officials, including the governor, 18 mayors, and 11 board members.

President Aquino has repeatedly expressed that the postponement and consequent synchronization of the ARMM elections with the national elections in 2013 is a vital foundation of systemic reform in the country’s troubled South. “There is a distortion in the system that led itself easily to the phenomenon of command votes and the distortion of the ballot,” he had previously said.