Reconfiguration of BARMM districts completed

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January 13, 2026 | 7:45pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The Bangsamoro parliament approved before dawn Tuesday, January 13, a bill reconfiguring the 32 parliamentary districts in the autonomous region, a requisite its first-ever elections since its creation in 2019.

The Supreme Court had earlier stated that the first-ever electoral exercise in the Bangsamoro region should be held in March 2026, after declaring unconstitutional the two related enabling measures that regional lawmakers drafted, meant to reconfigure the parliamentary districts in the autonomous region, after it removed Sulu from its territory last year, as petitioned by then Gov. Hadji Abdusakur Tan, Sr.

Sulu had seven parliamentary districts while still one of the six provinces in the Bangsamoro region, now covering only Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi provinces and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, where its regional capitol is located.

The lawyer Jet Lim, floor leader and spokesperson of the 80-seat parliament in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, told reporters on Tuesday that regional lawmakers made sure that the Parliament Bill 415 is “constitutionally sound” and attuned to the Supreme Court’s guidance on the setting up of the parliamentary districts in the region after its having taken Sulu out from BARMM.

The Parliament Bill 415 that regional lawmakers approved on third and final reading, during an extensive session that culminated after midnight Monday, allocated nine parliamentary districts in Lanao del Sur, five each in Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur, four each in Basilan and Tawi-Tawi.

It also established three parliamentary districts in Cotabato City and two in the Bangsamoro Special Geographic Area (SGA) in Cotabato province in Region 12.

The SGA covers 63 barangays that originally belonged to different towns in Cotabato province, whose residents voted in favor of the inclusion of their ancestral domains in the contiguous areas into the core territory of the Bangsamoro region during a plebiscite in 2019.

Members of the BARMM parliament, among them the lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, former regional local government minister, said they made sure that the Parliament Bill 451, now a regional law, legitimizes the conduct of the first regional elections in the autonomous region, slated in March this year.

“This bill was crafted to directly address the legal issues raised by the Supreme Court pertaining to the setting up of the parliamentary districts in the Bangsamoro region,” Sinarimbo said.

Sinarimbo said the measure ensures the conduct of BARMM’s first parliamentary elections within the High Tribunal’s prescribed timeline.

All 80 members of the BARMM parliament are functioning as presidential appointees, without electoral mandate, since the region’s creation in 2019.

BARMM, a product of 22 years of peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, replaced in 2019 the then 27-year less empowered Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front, which have separate peace compacts with the national government, are together overseeing many of the support agencies and ministries under the BARMM government and have representatives too in the region’s parliament.