Bangsamoro elections postponed for 4th time
The first Bangsamoro parliamentary elections will be rescheduled for the fourth time after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Wednesday announced that it approved a resolution postponing the polls due to legal and operational hurdles.
In an ambush interview, Comelec Chair George Erwin Garcia said the commission could no longer push through with the Bangsamoro elections on March 30 given the late passage of a law establishing the parliamentary districts in the region.
The new resolution also sets aside the previous resolutions that established the calendar of activities and period of certain prohibited acts issued by the Comelec in connection with the Bangsamoro parliamentary elections on March 30.
“We will wait for a law from Congress that will fix a new date for the holding of the elections,” Garcia said. “We will immediately write a manifestation to the Supreme Court and explain that this is in compliance with their earlier order to the Comelec.”
He added that the Comelec deputy executive director for operations, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) regional director and other provincial supervisors have also been tasked to inform the Bangsamoro parliament and other stakeholders regarding the new resolution.
“To our countrymen in Bangsamoro, this is just to explain that even if the Comelec would want to have an election, legally and operationally, we cannot conduct the polls in such a short time,” Garcia said.
Districting measure
The first parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for May 2022, was reset to coincide with the midterm elections on May 12, 2025. It was again rescheduled to Oct. 13, 2025, but the Supreme Court postponed the elections after it declared that the redistricting law, Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 77, and its predecessor, Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 58, were unconstitutional.
BAA 77, signed into law on Aug. 28, 2025, is the law that redistributed seven seats originally allocated to Sulu. The high court earlier ruled to exclude Sulu from the region after the province rejected the ratification of the Bangsamoro Organic Law in a plebiscite. BAA 58 created the parliamentary districts in the region.
According to Garcia, the regional elections would once again have to be moved as holding it on March 30 would violate Section 5 of the Voter’s Registration Act of 1996, which states that “No territory comprising an election precinct shall be altered or a new precinct be established at the start of the election period.”
This means a new districting law would have to be passed at least 120 days before the elections. However, Garcia noted that the Bangsamoro parliament approved the new measure only on Jan. 13 and signed by Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua on Jan. 20. The law would only take effect 15 days after its publication, which would be well within the prohibited timeframe.
Looking at May
Garcia said that it would also be operationally impossible to conduct the elections given how there is less than two months left before March 30.
As for when the new date for the elections would be decided, he said he was informed that the Senate and the House of Representatives might call for a hearing next week regarding the conduct of the Bangsamoro polls.
According to the Comelec chief, the Bangsamoro polls could be held as early as May “unless there will be other changes to the election code aside from districting. We will directly say as early as now, we cannot hold it by May [if there are other changes].”
“If, for example, and this is what we’ve heard, the accreditation of political parties will be opened again in Bangsamoro, that will take two to three months, and therefore we might not make it,” Garcia said.
With this latest postponement, he said the resolution also effectively terminated Comelec Resolutions Nos. 11181 and 11184 or the Calendar of Activities and Period of Certain Prohibited Acts for the parliamentary elections.
According to Garcia, the parliamentary elections require P2.5 billion in funding, noting that the poll body’s funds for the elections are still intact after the P1.2 billion it spent for printing ballots for the supposed Oct. 13, 2025, elections were returned under the 2026 national budget.
******
Get real-time news updates: inqnews.net/inqviber
