DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 03 February) – The House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms approved at 3:59 p.m. on Tuesday a substitute bill setting the date of the 1st Bangsamoro Parliamentary Elections to the second Monday of September and every three years thereafter.
The first elected Members of Parliament will assume their posts on December 1, 2026.
The second Monday of September 2026 is on September 14 or 11 months after the scheduled October 13, 2025 elections that did not push through because the Supreme Court on September 30 declared as unconstitutional the two districting laws – Bangsamoro Autonomy Acts 58 and 77.
The substitute bill amended Section 1 of House Bill 7236 filed by Lanao del Sur Representatives Zia Alonto Adiong and Yasser Alonto Balindong on January 21 which set the date of the election to September 28, 2026 and the next election to be held and synchronized with the national and local elections in 2028, and every three years thereafter.
The amendment paves the way for the desynchronization of the Bangsamoro Parliamentary Elections from the National and Local Elections, but still maintaining the three-year term mandated by the 1987 Constitution and RA 11054 or the Organic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
Adiong, chair of the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms, asked chair George Garcia of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) during the hearing livestreamed from the House of Representatives in Quezon City, if the BARMM polls could be desynchronized from the national and local polls.
“Last thing I want to see is another group filing another petition again before the Supreme Court,” Adiong said, adding this would again delay the holding of elections.
Under Adiong’s and Balindong’s original bill, the first elected Members of Parliament would hold office only for 19 months instead of three years as the next election is to be synchronized during the national and local elections in May 2028.
Adiong acknowledged the truncated term would likely be questioned in the Supreme Court.
He said the BARMM has a different set-up from the national government. The product of a peace agreement, the BARMM is the lone region in the country with a parliamentary set-up under a Presidential system.
“Can that be a basis to treat the regional parliamentary election not a local election, not a national election but a parliamentary election,” Adiong asked Garcia. He also asked if that would be a good basis for desynchronizing it from the national and local elections. He said desynchronizing would also be “in compliance with political autonomy, the real essence of a political autonomy.”
Garcia, an election lawyer before he was appointed in the Comelec, replied that if Congress passes a law fixing the term of three years and saying the next election is in 2029, this would be “tantamount to exception of the general rule,” so RA 7166 passed in 1991 which synchronized the conduct of national and local elections is the general law and “this now, (under) the authorship of Zia (Adiong) is the exception being a special law.”
Asked to comment on desynchronized election, lawyer Ona Caritos, Executive Director of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE), told the Committee that the BARMM polls, if separate from national and local elections, will be given more focus and “violence is reduced or minimized.”
The substitute bill also deleted the entire Section 5 on the conduct of sectoral assemblies. Section 5 provides that Comelec may, when warranted by the election timeline, among others, authorize the reopening of the filing of Manifestations of Intent of duly registered Parliamentary Sectoral Organizations.
Parliamentary Bill 419, passed on third and final reading on January 28, amended some provisions of the Bangsamoro Electoral Code, and revised the manner of election for sectoral representatives in the first Bangsamoro election – from sectoral assemblies to representatives elected directly by voters, except for the Non-Moro Indigenous Peoples’ whose two representatives will continue to be chosen through sectoral assembly. The other sectoral representatives – two women and one each for youth, settlers, Ulama and traditional leaders – will be directly elected.
Voters in the BARMM are to elect 80 Members of Parliament – 40 representing political parties, 32 single district representatives, and eight sectoral representatives. (Carolyn O. Arguillas / MindaNews)
