MANILA, Philippines?Will a failure to postpone elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao also kill the controversial effort to expand the self-governing territory?

With Mindanao officials allegedly still being kept in the dark over the new memorandum of agreement between the government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Palawan Representative Abraham Mitra on Friday said leaders in the south could not know for sure.

But this was, at least, the prevailing sense of stakeholders who gathered for a strategic meeting over the planned ARMM expansion the other day at a Manila restaurant.

"The feeling was that if the elections were not postponed, the MOA would be scrapped eventually," Mitra, who attended the meeting, told the Inquirer in a telephone interview.

Mitra, whose province stands to lose two towns to an expanded ARMM, said many of the officials present in the meeting felt that some quarters were pushing for the postponement of the August 11 elections so that more territories would be covered in the polls that would come much later.

The consolidated bill postponing the elections was passed on the committee level last Thursday, but lawmakers admitted that time was running out. A top official at the House of Representatives described deliberations on the bill as "an exercise in futility."

An administration lawmaker criticized negotiators for allegedly capitulating to appease the MILF.

"Have government negotiators bargained away the whole store? How many times do we have to capitulate just to appease the MILF? How many plebiscites do we have to conduct just to satisfy them?" Cotobato Representative Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza asked in a statement.

She said negotiators "should stop using Mindanao villages, whether chiefly Christian or Muslim, as pawns to be playfully bargained away."

The lawmaker said MILF rebels were in fact "causing trouble in my area," citing several instances when the separatist group burned down houses and raided government detachments.

"The latest count is 75," she told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, referring to the number of houses supposedly razed by the MILF in her district.

Both Mitra and Taliño-Mendoza cried foul over the alleged lack of transparency in the proposed ARMM expansion. South Cotobato Representative Darlene Antonino-Custodio said she had yet to see the contents of the agreement considering that signing was already set on August 5.

During the Manila gathering Thursday, Mitra said one local official was surprised that his area was to be included in the ARMM.

So far, Taliño-Mendoza said Mindanao leaders had been told that up to 712 villages would be "annexed by the self-governing region."

Pending expansion, the ARMM has a total of 2,470 villages in Marawi City and 111 municipalities across six provinces -- Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, she said.

"There was no transparency at all," Custodio told the Inquirer. "If (government officials) really intend to have peace in Mindanao, any agreement would have to be embraced by the people living there."

Mitra said residents in the two Palawan towns that would be included in the expansion -- Bataraza and Balabac -- were against the plan.

"Many of them, even two mayors who are both Muslims, don't want to be included in the ARMM," he said. "Many of them have left Mindanao in the first place to get away from the conflict and have better lives elsewhere."