THE Senate on Wednesday directed the Commission on Elections to automate the elections of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

“There is a big possibility that the Supreme Court will decide in favor of holding the ARMM elections. So, you better prepare to automate the elections,” Senator Panfilo Lacson told the Comelec officials present during the budget deliberations.

Comelec chairperson Sixto Brillantes told Lacson that the decision to automate the ARMM elections if ever it will push through will depend on the majority of the commissioners.

Lacson then asked one by one the commissioners present and five of them voted for automation, including Brillantes. The commissioners present were Rene Sarmiento, Lucenito Tagle, Armando Velasco and Augusto Lagman. Absent were Yusoph Elias and Christian Robert Lim.

“The ARMM elections must be automated. The policy has been set according to RA 8436 and RA 9369. There is no room for change. There is no choice. You cannot return to manual polls,” Senator Franklin Drilon added.

Brillantes assured the senators that Comelec is ready to automate the ARMM elections whether the Supreme Court will decide to hold it this year or early next year.

The Lower House and the Senate passed and approved Republic Act 10153 which postponed the August 8 ARMM elections and synchronizing it with the national elections in 2013. No less than President Benigno Simeon Aquino 3rd has lobbied for the passage of the law.

Asked if Comelec has enough time to prepare for an automated ARMM elections, Brillantes said yes, adding that Smartmatic is offering the machines used in the 2010 elections for only P1.6 billion.

Brillantes said the Comelec will just pay Smartmatic P1.6 billion and the poll body will own the 80,000 machines.

Drilon said Comelec has fiscal autonomy and it can use its P5 billion savings to purchase the Smartmatic PCOS machines.

Meanwhile, Lagman, the only non-lawyer among the commissioners, said that he is amenable to an automated ARMM elections but insisted that the poll body must not use the machines of Smartmatic since several glitches and errors were experienced in the last elections. Smartmatic is a foreign-owned firm.

“Lagman is proposing to use new machines built by Filipinos wherein it has added features,” Brillantes said. “But, Smartmatic’s offer is good enough since we will save more.”

Lagman, however, is an IT expert, his only qualification why President Aquino appointed him to the post.

Brillantes said they expect to spend around P480 million for the automated ARMM polls.

The senators deferred the approval of the P9.9 billion proposed budget of Comelec pending the submission of documents on personal services and administrative budget like the hiring of private lawyers and allowances allotted for Solicitor General.

Brillantes vowed to submit the documents within 15 days.

President Aquino has lobbied for the postponement of ARMM elections because of a Commission on Audit report that around P1 billion was missing from the ARMM coffers.

Republic Act 10153 synchronizes the ARMM election with the next scheduled national and local elections and empowers President Aquino to appoint Officers in Charge (OICs) to serve as ARMM governor, governors of the region’s provinces and other OICs.

The opposition Lakas-Kampi party, the PDP-Laban party and the late President Cory Aquino’s officer-in-charge governor of Tawi-Tawi Al Tillah, who heads an Islamic society, petitioned the Supreme Court for a TRO (temporary restraining order) to nullify the postponement.

The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the issue.