Ex-activists named BARMM parliament deputy floor leaders

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December 12, 2025 | 7:02pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Local officials were elated with the designation on Thursday, December 11, as deputy floor leaders in the 80-member Bangsamoro parliament of two Moro lawyers, both former outspoken student activists now involved in programs complementing Malacañang’s peace overtures with southern communities.

The regional lawmaker John Anthony Lim, spokesperson of the Bangsamoro parliament, and officials of their information office at the capitol in Cotabato City of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, confirmed to reporters on Friday the nomination as deputy floor leaders, via a unanimous, collective imprimatur by BARMM lawmakers, of Naguib Sinarimbo and Suharto Ambolodto.

Lim and his fellow lawmakers, whose regional figurehead is BARMM Chief Minister Abdulrauf Macacua, said Sinarimbo and Ambolodto, as deputy floor leaders, shall cooperate in overseeing plenary proceedings and together ensure efficient legislative linkages among members of the 80-seat parliament, all public service facets of the Bangsamoro government, the local Muslim, Christian and indigenous non-Moro communities and other stakeholders.

Maguindanao del Norte Vice Governor Marshall Sinsuat and two other local executives in the province, Vice Mayor Bobsteel Sinsuat of Datu Odin Sinsuat and Mayor Raida Tomawis-Sinsuat of Datu Blah Sinsuat, separately told reporters that they were elated the Bangsamoro parliament’s having installed Sinarimbo and Ambolodto as deputy floor leaders.

“We are happy with this development. As a provincial vice governor, I will continue supporting the peace and sustainable development initiatives of the parliament, with the two of them there as deputy floor leaders," said Sinsuat, elected as first-term vice governor during the May 12, 2025 electoral exercise.

The Christian mayor of Lamitan City, Roderick Furigay, said his administration shall also help push forward the peace and security goals of Sinarimbo and Ambolodto.

“Me and my constituents gladly welcome their designation as deputy floor leaders of the Bangsamoro parliament,” Furigay told reporters in Cotabato City on Friday via mobile phone.

The chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front, Muslimin Sema, who is serving as Bangsamoro labor and employment minister, said he and his followers in the MNLF also recognize Sinarimbo and Ambolodto as new deputy floor leaders in the regional parliament.

Of ethnic Iranun descent, Sinarimbo, local government minister of BARMM prior to his appointment last March as member of parliament by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., is chairperson of the local government committee of the region's lawmaking body before he became its deputy floor leader on Thursday.

Ambolodto, a full-blooded Maguindanaon, has been serving as vice-chairperson of the parliament’s committee on rules and as chairperson of the committee on Bangsamoro justice system long before his designation to the same post.

The two of them are both popular in Central Mindanao for their activities meant to sustain the gains of the government’s separate peace agreements with the MNLF and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that have representatives in the Bangsamoro parliament and are also jointly managing several agencies of the BARMM government.