Non-Moro IP groups screen nominees for BARMM parliament

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August 8, 2026 | 5:27pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Officials on Saturday, August 8, urged the non-Moro indigenous groups in the Bangsamoro region to choose only the most qualified representatives, as nominees, for their 80-member parliament, during an inter-tribal selection process prior to the September 14 regional parliamentary polls.

Councils of at least six non-Muslim indigenous tribes in the Bangsamoro region are to converge for the activity, shortly before the September 14 regional elections,  during which they are to choose two representatives from their communities to the regional lawmaking body.

The identities of their favored representatives to the parliament, chosen via nomination and not through a regular election process administered by the Commission on Elections, shall be made public on the election day, according to BARMM regional officials.

There are two seats in the 80-member parliament intended for representatives of the indigenous peoples, or IPs, in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Three members of the Bangsamoro parliament, Ishak Mastura of Maguindanao del Norte, Naguib Sinarimbo of Cotabato City, who are both lawyers, and the physician ophthalmologist, Kadil Sinolinding Jr., who is also functioning as regional health minister, had separately called on leaders of the IPs in BARMM to carefully choose whom they would want to represent them in the region’s law-making body.

The three lawmakers separately told reporters on Saturday that the BARMM parliament is the proper forum where the region’s IP communities can best present recommendations and propose plans on how the regional government can best serve their constituents in their ancestral domains.

The Comelec, the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and the military’s Western Mindanao Command are now all set for the first-ever September 14 parliamentary polls in BARMM’s five provinces, Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi, and in its three cities, Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato.

Cotabato City is the regional capital of BARMM, where there are non-Moro ethnic Teduray residents.

Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr., a senior official of the Serbisyong Inklusibo, Alyansang Progresibo Party, was quoted in radio reports on Saturday as saying that the non-Muslim IPs ought to have a strong representation in the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament, which is essential in the crafting of laws needed to foster peace and sustainable development in their ancestral domains.

“There would be no Muslim communities in the Bangsamoro region to talk about today if not for the non-Muslim indigenous communities in Mindanao that existed long before Islamic missionaries from what are now independent states in Asia and in the Middle East came in, many centuries ago, to spread Islam in what is now the Bangsamoro region,” Adiong said

Lanao del Sur, covering 39 towns and 101 barangays in its capital, Marawi City, has an indigenous non-Muslim Higaonon community.

Leaders of Lanao del Sur’s Higaonon tribe held a tribal assembly last June 27 in Wao, a highland town in the province and there discussed who from among their tribe can be nominated to represent the IPs in the region to the regional parliament.

Leaders of the Higaonon tribe are to participate in the BARMM inter-tribal conclave before the September 14 elections for them and counterparts in other IP groups to choose potential representatives who can best represent them in the 80-member parliament.