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MANILA, PHILIPPINES - ELECTIONS in an impoverished autonomous Muslim region in the southern Philippines are likely to be postponed because they risk scuttling a peace deal with the government, officials said on Wednesday.
Legislation in Congress aimed at delaying the polls is likely to be passed, a spokesman for President Gloria Arroyo, who is backing the move, said.
Pushing ahead with the August 11 vote in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) could delay a peace deal with the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), presidential spokesman Jesus Dureza said.
MILF negotiators had formally asked the government to postpone the local polls, because many of the candidates are rivals from a rival group who may try to scuttle the peace deal.
Mr Dureza said Arroyo has received assurances from congressmen that a bill postponing the elections will be passed.
'We got support last night from the House of Representatives,' Mr Dureza told reporters.
Composed of six mainly Muslim provinces and one city in the southern island of Mindanao, the ARMM was created largely to accommodate the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the country's former insurgent group from which the MILF had split.
The MNLF signed a peace deal with Manila in 1996, and many of its former commanders have become local officials of the ARMM. The law mandates an election for local officials every three years.
The MILF and the government peace panel are tentatively set to sign on August 5 an agreement on the thorny issue of 'ancestral domain' or lands claimed by the MILF as historically theirs, officials said.
Signing of that agreement would pave the way for a final peace treaty ending the MILF's insurgency that began in 1978, officials said.
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