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The proposal to delay the BARMM parliamentary elections is opposed by two former Senate presidents from Mindanao, Aquilino Pimentel III and Juan Miguel Zubiri
MANILA, Philippines – Lawmakers filed a counterpart bill in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, November 5, to postpone the first parliamentary elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) by another year.
House Bill 11034, authored by Speaker Martin Romualdez and Lanao del Sur 1st District Representative Zia Adiong, mirrors a proposal introduced by Senate President Francis Escudero in the Senate a day earlier.
Both proposed measures seek to move the BARMM elections from 2025 to 2026 in light of a Supreme Court (SC) ruling in September that excluded Sulu province from the Muslim-majority region.
The proposals come even as the Commission on Elections (Comelec) began accepting certificates of candidacy (COCs) from those seeking seats in the BARMM parliament for the 2025 midterm elections. The filing period, which started on Monday, will run until Saturday, November 9.
Adiong told state-owned Radyo Pilipinas that the proposed postponement of the BARMM elections would allow Congress to give the interim Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) time to decide what to do with the seven district seats reserved for Sulu in the region’s parliament. He said it would also allow the Comelec to adjust its preparations for the 2025 elections.
The Bangsamoro parliament, supposedly an 80-member body, includes party, district, and sectoral representatives who will select the region’s chief minister.
Meanwhile, the proposals to delay the BARMM parliamentary elections are opposed by two former Senate presidents from Mindanao, Aquilino Pimentel III and Juan Miguel Zubiri.
Pimentel said the BARMM elections should proceed as scheduled in 2025 to allow citizens in the region “to vote to reaffirm or change their leaders” under democratic principles.
Zubiri, for his part, emphasized that the region had waited long enough to see its first parliamentary elections and that a second postponement would be unjustified.
He noted that the BARMM parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for 2022, had already been moved to 2025 toward the end of the Duterte administration in 2021 due to the crippling effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. – Rappler.com
