A reality by March 2026? (1)
Just a few days ago, before writing this, I received news about the approval by the committee on rules and local government of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) of Bangsamoro Autonomous Bill No. 415. While still not a regionally approved autonomous act or law, the approval of the bill at the committee level has once again spurred people’s hopes that the transitional government in the region will finally end after several extensions of the already extended transition period of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) government.
In early 2019, the BARMM was installed after the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), or Republic Act No. 11054, was approved, then ratified through the conduct of a regional plebiscite in January 2019. This was the result of the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro on March 27, 2014, which concluded more than a decade of painstaking peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the leadership of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Under both the CAB and the BOL, the BARMM is run as a parliamentary form of regional government asymmetrical to the national government’s presidential and unitary form of government.
The BTA then became the transition government, both as the region’s legislative and executive branches. As such, ministers of the regional government’s bureaucratic ministries, offices, and agencies are also Members of Parliament (MPs) or legislators in the BTA.
The first extension was from 2022 (the original end of the transition period) to 2025, after former President Rodrigo Duterte approved a law that pushed the original transition period of three years. This law was meant to extend the transition period to May 2025, to synchronize with the national elections. The extension lasted for three years, making the entire transition period six years. Both regional and national lawmakers agreed that three years was too short for a meaningful transitional government to become fully operational.
But no such regional parliamentary elections took place in the national elections of May 2025. Instead, another extension period—shorter this time—from May to October 2025 was again legislated by the national government.
The extension of the extended transition period was supposed to address several urgent complaints about the regional government’s being unprepared for a truly functional regular parliamentary government. The Commission on Elections also expressed that synchronizing the first regional parliamentary elections would present serious logistical challenges, on top of being cumbersome for many of the regional voters. For everyone in the region, it would be the first time they would vote as part of a parliamentary form of government, something no one in the region—even in the national government—has experienced in their lives as voters. But Oct. 13, 2025 came and went without the first regional parliamentary elections happening.
On Aug. 19, 2025, the BTA passed the Bangsamoro Autonomy Act (BAA) 77, which assigned new electoral districts for the BARMM after the exit of the province of Sulu from the region in September 2024. Sulu’s electoral districts were to be distributed fairly to the new configuration of the BARMM’s constituent provinces and areas, sans Sulu.
But based on national electoral laws, the timing of this crucial piece of legislation to allow the conduct of the October parliamentary elections was off, as it was passed and approved as a regional law just five days within the prescribed election period from August to Oct. 13, 2025. Moreover, the Supreme Court found serious flaws in BAA 77: it violated not only the BOL but also the Philippine Constitution regarding the assignment of electoral districts. Areas “contiguous to each other” are the ones to constitute an electoral district. But BAA 77 put several areas far from each other and grouped them as one, a clear piece of evidence of gerrymandering on the part of the regional law’s framers.
The people’s hopes for finally voting for their desired candidates to run the very first regular parliament of the BARMM were dashed once again. Wild talks have circulated about how some MPs have become politically avaricious, taking advantage of their highly esteemed positions courtesy of their deep “connectivity” with the appointing power—then Duterte and currently, President Marcos.
But several civil society groups decried this protracted extension as a devious way for the MPs to stay in power and privilege and to enjoy the pecuniary and prestigious entitlements of their positions.
(More next week.)
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