MARAWI CITY, Philippines – Prospects for elections to push through this year in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) surfaced after the Senate Committee on Local Government held here Thursday its lone first and final field hearing which resulted in the rejection of poll postponement proponents’ purported reform-oriented justifications.

Senators Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Miguel Zuburi and Francis Escudero, chairman, vice chairman and key member of the Senate committee respectively, drew repeated applauses from majority of the more than 2,000 delegates after they virtually acted as prosecutors in grilling speakers for the poll postponement and appointment of an ARMM caretaker government.

The three young senators instantly drew titles as the nation’s “new icons of democracy” after they took turns in declaring in the hearing that postponing the Aug. 8, 2011 ARMM polls and installing officers-in-charge (OICs) would yield more disadvantages for both the government and the people of the autonomous region.

They debunked contentions that the twin postponement-appointment move would allow much needed reforms to dismantle private armies and “command votes,” allow thorough accounting of public expenditures, and improve administrative operations in the 20-year-old ARMM.