Comelec to Congress: Make up mind on BARMM polls

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday asked Congress to make up its mind before the end of December on whether to forego or push through with the parliamentary elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) scheduled for next year, alongside the national and local elections.

This developed as moves, mainly by Senate President Francis Escudero and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, to reset yet again the parliamentary elections drew mixed reactions from leaders in the BARMM, and national legislators.

Comelec Chair George Garcia made the appeal during the Senate hearing on Senate Bill No. 2862 that seeks to postpone the regional polls from May 12, 2025, to May 11, 2026, to give time for some legal adjustments owing to the Supreme Court ruling removing Sulu province from the autonomous region.

“We hope that there will be a development whether or not the elections will push through because the Comelec will print out ballots by the last week of December. That means we will finalize the list of candidates hopefully before Dec. 13 of this year,” Garcia told the Senate panel.

While Garcia stressed that their appeal was not meant to put pressure on Congress, he hoped that the lawmakers would also understand that they also have a timeline to work on.

The Comelec, through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office, has opened the filing of candidacies for the regional polls on Monday and is set to close on Saturday. After four days, there was still a handful who had filed their candidacies.

READ: 40 more aspirants file COCs, CANs for BARMM polls as deadline nears 

‘Compelling reason’

The measures filed by Escudero and Romualdez came on the heels of a resolution from the BARMM parliament asking Congress to postpone the regional elections to 2028 to give it time to deal with the implications of the high court ruling on Sulu, especially the need to reapportion the seven parliamentary district seats allocated to the province.

Earlier, BARMM Chief Minister Ahod “Al Haj Murad” Ebrahim said the regional legislature no longer had sufficient time to do the fine-tuning. If the Sulu seats are not reapportioned, and with the Comelec vowing to push through with the polls without a law stopping it, the historic political exercise would churn out only 73 of 80 members of the first duly elected Bangsamoro parliament in 2025.

Escudero said the Supreme Court ruling “provides a compelling reason to postpone the Bangsamoro regular elections given its legal implications on the exclusion of Sulu from the autonomous region.”

Romualdez explained that the deferment of the elections was being sought to ensure a well-prepared and effective transition for the Bangsamoro people.

“With Sulu removed from BARMM jurisdiction, the parliamentary seat allocations require recalibration, a process demanding time and extensive legislative adjustments to reflect the region’s new structure accurately,” said Romualdez.

‘No election’ scenario

But the prospect of another “no election” scenario in the region does not sit well with several political leaders in the BARMM.

House Deputy Minority Leader Mujiv Hataman, who represents Basilan, balked at the idea of thwarting the right to suffrage of the region’s people. He demanded the conduct of extensive public consultations before the matter is decided, and not just rely on “the opinion of a few invited resource persons in the Senate and the House.”

“I stand firm in my position that the BARMM elections next year should push through in accordance with the Constitution and the Bangsamoro Organic Law. There is no true democracy if citizens are not the ones choosing their leaders,” Hataman stressed.

Maguindanao del Sur Gov. Bai Mariam Mangudadatu told senators during the hearing that if the election is postponed again, “it would already be seven years that the BARMM is without oversight review on how they spent more than P500 billion [in] block grant and [other] government funds.”

Poll watchdog Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente), in a statement, said the reasons cited by Escudero and Romualdez for deferring the BARMM elections “do not present an urgent, substantial, or compelling justification for postponement.”

“Regular, periodic elections are fundamental to democracy and should only be postponed under truly exceptional and compelling circumstances,” Lente pointed out.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III and Sen. Imee Marcos also opposed the proposed measure.

Sen. JV Ejercito, chair of the Senate committee on local government, acknowledged that the issue was complicated.

“We have to balance it. We have to hear both sides. We really want the election to push through, but we have to also take into consideration the legal dilemma and issues that have been discussed today,” Ejercito said. —REPORTS FROM TINA G. SANTOS, JEANNETTE I. ANDRADE, EDWIN O. FERNANDEZ AND JEROME ANING