MAKATI CITY - Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Jose Melo said the poll body will decide next week whether or not it will include Sulu and Tawi-Tawi in the planned poll automation in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in August.

In a telephone interview, Melo said the Comelec en banc met with an advisory council Friday to discuss the inclusion of two more provinces.

"We will know by Monday or Tuesday," he said.

After attending Friday's Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Automated Elections meeting, Melo stressed that the Comelec will follow the government procurement law, as it restarts the bid for the supply of technology.

"We will now work on the assumption that there won't be a joint resolution," Melo said, as he referred to the oversight committee's decision not to push through with a joint resolution to suspend the government procurement act to facilitate the bidding process of technology required in the ARMM polls.

Suppliers have failed to qualify in several bids conducted by Comelec on two major technology components required to run an automated elections in ARMM.

Melo said since the Comelec is reverting to following the government procurement act, it will await the decision on bidders for the optical-mark reader technology, one of the technologies that will be used during the polls.

The other technology, direct recording electronic (DRE) technology, will also be used in some provinces. During a previous oversight committee hearing, Comelec agreed to automate elections in four provinces, namely Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sharif Kabunsuan and Basilan. Sulu and Tawi-Tawi was supposed to proceed with manual elections, given the lack of time to meet procedures and regulations under the government procurement law.

It was during that previous hearing that Senators Edgardo Angara and Juan Ponce-Enrile suggested a legal cover by filing and adopting a joint resolution suspending the government procurement law.

Based on the recommendations of an advisory council, Comelec is using two technologies in the ARMM elections: DRE and optical-mark reader. The Comelec will use DRE technology for the whole province of Maguindanao, while the other provinces will run on optical-mark reader.

The Department of Budget and Management has allocated about P867 million for the automation of the elections in ARMM.

DRE uses a touch-screen or touch-pad technology for voting, while OMR requires voters to complete a paper-based ballot which is then fed into a specially designed machine, similar to a scanner.

The advisory council had recommended a six-month schedule for the deployment of the automated election system. This will also include training of voters and the users in Comelec, and "mock elections." The advisory council is the body of expert advisers created under Republic Act 9369 and given the task of recommending to the Comelec which technology to use for the automation of elections.