The League of Bangsamoro Organizations, a conglomerate of 600 groups, calls for a special plebiscite in Sulu
MANILA, Philippines – The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) has ruled out the possibility of holding another plebiscite specifically for Sulu to settle whether the province should be excluded from the five-year-old Muslim-majority region.
The regional government announced its stance as the League of Bangsamoro Organizations (LBO), a conglomerate of 600 groups, called for a special plebiscite in Sulu. This comes after a Supreme Court (SC) ruling in September which excluded Sulu from the BARMM.
Sulu’s exclusion stems from the province’s 2019 vote against ratifying the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), which established the BARMM.
LBO spokesperson Mahdie Amelia said Congress would need to postpone the BARMM parliamentary elections set for 2025 to allow time for a special plebiscite in Sulu.
Bills filed earlier this week by Senate President Francis Escudero, Speaker Martin Romualdez, and several lawmakers seek to delay BARMM’s first parliamentary elections to 2026.
Mohd Asnin Pendatun, BARMM Cabinet Secretary and spokesperson, told Rappler on Wednesday, November 6, that while a special plebiscite in Sulu is “possible in theory, it’s not doable in the near future” due to time constraints.
Pendatun said the regional government understood the call for a plebiscite, noting that it wasn’t clear to Sulu voters in 2019 that voting against the BOL’s ratification would mean the province’s exclusion from BARMM. At the time, voters were only asked whether to ratify the BOL.
“There was no mention of exclusion then,” Pendatun said.
During the lead-up to the 2019 plebiscite, Pendatun explained, “the understanding was that the ARMM would vote as one.”
BARMM’s precursor, ARMM or the now-defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, had included the provinces of Sulu, Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Tawi-Tawi, and Maguindanao as part of its political territory.
Pendatun said that although 54% of Sulu’s electorate voted against the BOL in 2019, Sulu was still included in BARMM because it was part of the ARMM, which ostensibly voted as a bloc.
Since October, at least five motions for partial reconsideration have been filed with the SC, asking it to reverse its decision to exclude Sulu from the BARMM.
While the BARMM government was not a party to the case, it filed motions to intervene and partially reconsider the decision, given the ruling’s implications for the autonomous region.
BARMM leaders had mixed reactions to the SC’s ruling. On one hand, the decision put an end and addressed questions about the BOL’s constitutionality. On the other hand, Pendatun said, there was also disappointment over Sulu’s exclusion from the region.
With Sulu now out of BARMM, officials are uncertain about what to do with the seven district seats allotted to the province in the BARMM parliament.
“The status of the seven seats from Sulu’s districts is left hanging,” Pendatun said.
Under BARMM’s original setup, 32 of the region’s 80 parliamentary seats, or 40%, were designated for districts in its provinces and cities. With Sulu’s exclusion, only 25 seats, or roughly 31%, remain allocated to districts.
Tawi-Tawi has four parliamentary seats, Lanao del Sur, including Marawi City, has eight, Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur each have four, Basilan has three, and Cotabato City, the regional center, has two.
Forty seats, or half of the parliament’s total, are allotted to BARMM-accredited parties, while 10%, or eight seats, are reserved for sectoral representatives.
Pendatun said the BARMM government will continue preparing for the region’s first parliamentary elections scheduled simultaneously with the national and local midterms, despite the bills in Congress proposing a one-year postponement following the SC ruling.
“We leave it to the discretion and collective wisdom of both houses of Congress,” he said. – Rappler.com
