It’s final: Only 73 seats open in BARMM polls

SHOW OF FORCE Maranaos from Kapai, Tagoloan and other towns of Lanao del Sur gather in Marawi City on Tuesday to urge Bangsamoro Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua to veto the parliamentary redistricting law. Two days later, Macacua signed the measure which the Commission on Elections says it can no longer implement. —RICHEL V. UMEL

Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair George Erwin Garcia on Thursday stood pat on the poll body’s decision to proceed with the Oct. 13 elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) with only 73 of 80 parliament seats up for contest.

Garcia made this announcement even as BARMM Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua signed on Thursday the Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 77 that redrew the 32 parliamentary districts after seven seats intended for Sulu province, which is no longer part of the autonomous region, were reallocated.

The measure was passed after the Supreme Court ruled last year that Sulu was not part of the BARMM, as a majority of its voters rejected the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) during a plebiscite in 2019.

“We apologize to the parliament. We know that it seems that we won’t implement the law,” Garcia said in his remarks during a ceremony to mark the resumption of ballot printing for the parliamentary election at the National Printing Office in Quezon City.

Garcia said they already lacked “material time” to consider BAA 77 in their preparations for the elections, which will use automated counting machines.

BAA 77 became law just 44 days before the Oct. 13 political exercise. It amended the earlier measure, Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 58, which factored in Sulu province in the creation of parliamentary districts.

BAA 77, or the Parliamentary Redistricting Act of 2025, was thought to be the final act of the interim parliament to restore to 80 the number of seats to be contested in the first-ever regional elections.

Under BAA 77, the 32 single-member parliamentary districts in the region are reapportioned as follows: nine for Lanao del Sur, five for Maguindanao del Norte, five for Maguindanao del Sur, four for Basilan, four for Tawi-Tawi, three for Cotabato City, and two for the Special Geographic Area.

George Garcia

Call for veto

Member of Parliament Naguib Sinarimbo, chair of the committee on local government, said that the passage of the redistricting bill was one of the primary commitments of the extended transition parliament, which was supposed to end on June 30 this year.

“This is the final act of the Parliament to ensure there is an election in October,” Sinarimbo said.

Two days earlier, members of the United Bangsamoro Justice Party in Lanao del Sur province urged Macacua to veto the measure.

“If the chief minister will not veto the redistricting bill, we will go to the Supreme Court,” said Omar Ali Sharief, leader of the Ranao Movement.

Sharief said the measure created a new parliamentary district in Lanao del Sur that disregarded the contiguity rule.

He cited the case of the people of Kapai and Tagoloan towns who were “detached” from the communities where they had established geographic and cultural connections.

According to Sharief, the BOL states that districts should be “contiguous, compact, and adjacent.” The bill, he said, divides the people and pits them against each other.

In October last year, Kapai Mayor Hamza Eppie Gauraki filed his candidacy for representative of Lanao del Sur’s District 2. He feared that if the redistricting bill became law, he could not vote for himself since his hometown was transferred from District 2 to District 3.

Notice from Speaker

Just hours after Macacua’s office announced the signing of BAA 77, Parliament Speaker Pangalian Balindong put out a public notice stating that he had not signed the measure nor authorized anyone to sign on his behalf.

The BAA 77 document, which Macacua signed, had a signature over Balindong’s name with the word “for.”

The signature, according to Balindong, “is unauthorized, void, and without legal effect, constituting a violation of law.”

The Speaker’s signature is necessary to trigger the measure’s transmission to the Chief Minister for signature, hence completing the process of the bill becoming a regional law. —WITH REPORTS FROM DREMA Q. BRAVO AND RICHEL V. UMEL