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John Unson - Philstar.com
May 7, 2026 | 7:19pm
Bangsamoro parliament member Ishak Mastura was among the regional officials who filed on Thursday, May 7, 2026, certificates of candidacy for a seat in the lawmaking body in the autonomous region.
Philstar.com / John Unson
COTABATO CITY, Philippines — All went well in the three-day filing of certificates of candidacy at the Commission on Elections by candidates for the Bangsamoro 80-seat parliament, a requisite for the first-ever September 14 parliamentary polls in the autonomous region.
Officials of Comelec in the provinces in the Bangsamoro region and in its regional office in Cotabato started processing COCs of aspirants for seats in the 80-seat parliament on Tuesday, an activity secured by the Philippine National Police and the military’s Western Mindanao Command until its culmination Thursday.
The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao covers the provinces of Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, where BARMM’s regional capitol is located.
Candidates of the four largest BARMM partisan blocs, from among 16, the Bangsamoro Federalist Party, the Bangsamoro Party of the Moro National Liberation Front, the Serbisyong Inklusibo, Alyansang Progresibo and the United Bangsamoro Justice Party of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front have all filed their COCs in Comelec’s regional and provincial offices in the autonomous region.
A ranking official of the Bangsamoro Federalist Party, BARMM parliament member Naguib Sinarimbo, told reporters on Thursday that all of their candidates for the region’s lawmaking body had complied with all of Comelec’s documentary requisites.
The figurehead of the Bangsamoro Party, BARMM’s labor and employment minister Muslimin Sema, said on Thursday that the filing of COCs by their candidates went on smoothly.
“There wasn’t any problem at all,” Sema, chairman of the MNLF, said, referring to the conduct of the three-day activity that the provincial and the regional offices of the Comelec facilitated.
Among the candidates who beat Thursday's deadline for the filing of COCs were Sinarimbo and two other members of the parliament, the lawyer Ishak Mastura, who belongs to the Bangsamoro Federalist Party, and the physician-ophthalmologist Kadil Sinolinding Jr.
Mastura, a scion of a noble Maguindanaon clan, is aspiring for the parliamentary seat covering the adjoining Sultan Kudarat and Sultan Mastura towns in Maguindanao del Norte.
Sinolinding, who is also serving as BARMM's health minister in a concurrent capacity, is an independent candidate for the parliamentary post in the second district of the Bangsamoro Special Geographic Area, which is comprised of eight newly-created towns inside the core territory of Cotabato province in Administrative Region 12.
The lawyer Ray Sumalipao, Comelec’s regional director for BARMM, said on Thursday that they are grateful to the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and to the military’s Western Mindanao Command for securing their offices during the three-day COC filing activity.
