Sen. Miguel Zubiri, who favors holding the August 8 ARMM elections as scheduled, confirmed intense lobbying efforts by Palace allies to get lawmakers to ratify a reconciled Senate-House version of the poll-postponement bill by Wednesday so Congress need not go into special session during the recess.

“We don’t want to embarrass our colleagues [who were previously against postponement] but we now have colleagues who have turned noncommittal [on the issue]. Lobbying is intense, even I was approached,” Zubiri said mostly in Filipino in a radio interview on Sunday.

Zubiri added, however, that at least six other senators, including Francis Escudero, Loren Legarda, Joker Arroyo, Bong Revilla and Minority Leader Alan Cayetano, remain steadfast in their opposition to the bill that would suspend the elections and enable Malacañang to replace incumbent ARMM officials with appointed officers in charge who will hold office until the next ARMM polls in 2013.

But ruling Liberal Party Sen. Frank Drilon, principal sponsor of the bill, admitted that he will ask the Senate leadership to call for a showdown vote Monday on the Senate version of the ARMM poll bill to give a bicameral conference committee time to reconcile conflicting provisions in the Malacañang-certified measure.

“We need to decide now. If they [senators] believe in the bill they should vote ‘yes’, if not, they can vote ‘no,’” Drilion said in a separate interview. “We will ask the leadership to put it to a vote because it is a certified urgent measure that was also endorsed by the Ledac [Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council].”

Drilon indicated that those in favor of the bill are likely to prevail in the Senate showdown vote.

He explained that they need to decide on the matter by Monday and convene a bicameral committee soon after because the lawmakers still have to reconcile the Senate bill with the House version, which provides that officers in charge appointed to OIC positions in the interim would be ineligible to run in the next ARMM polls to be synchronized with the 2013 midterm elections.

This developed as former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr. predicted that the legal issues surrounding the ARMM poll-postponement bill is likely to reach the Supreme Court, whatever consolidated version is adopted by the bicameral conference panel.

“For sure it is going to go to the Supreme Court,” Pimentel said, but declined to say who will initiate the legal action.