BARMM election campaign starts; 2 candidates assured of victory as they are running unopposed
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 30 July 2026) – The 45-day campaign period for the 1st Bangsamoro Parliamentary Elections on September 14 starts Thursday with at least 631 candidates and nominees vying for 80 seats.
The nearly 2.4 million voters in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) are to elect 80 Members of Parliament – 40 of them political party representatives, 32 single district representatives and eight sectoral representatives.
A total of 494 nominees from 13 Regional Parliamentary Political Parties (RPPPs) are vying for 40 political party seats and 107 candidates are running for the 32 district seats.
But even before the campaign period begins, there are two districts in Maguindanao del Norte where the winners are already known as they are running unopposed: Ibrahim Pendat Ibay of the Bangsamoro Federalist Party (BFP) for the 2nd Parliamentary District and Ishak Veloso Mastura, also of the BFP, for the 5th Parliamentary district.
For the eight sectoral representatives, six will be elected by direct vote – two for the settler communities, one each for women, youth, Ulama and traditional leaders – while the two representatives for Non-Moro Indigenous Peoples (NMIP) will be chosen through tribal assemblies ahead of the September 14 polls.
The Commission on Elections has set July 27 to August 9 as the period where NMIP communities will conduct their Tribal Assemblies, and August 24 to September 4 as the period for Regional Inter-Tribal Convention to select the two representatives.
The BARMM has a voting population of 2,393,202. The Commission on Elections announced on Monday that the printing of the ballots was completed on June 26.
Comelec chair George Erwin Garcia had earlier announced that they will not print excess ballots to prevent allegations of fraud on election day. “There will be no excess ballots. It is strictly a one-to-one ratio,” Garcia was quoted as saying by the Philippine News Agency (PNA) in its July 9 report.
“There is the issue of where the excess ballots are being used. If there are 5,212 precincts and each has three excess ballots, that amounts to 15,000 ballots. We don’t want any suspicion arising regarding where those excess ballots end up,” Garcia said, according to the PNA report.
BARMM comprises Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur and Tawi-Tawi, and the cities of Cotabato, Lamitan and Marawi, and the Special Geographic Area comprising 63 villages in six towns previously under North Cotabato. Basilan and Tawi-Tawi are island provinces. The rest are in the mainland.
The 13 RPPPs participating in the elections are the Alliance of Bangsamoro Tri-Peoples Party (ABOT):, Bangsamoro Party (BAPA) of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) led by Muslimin Sema; Bangsamoro Empowerment and Social Transformation Party (BEST), Bangsamoro Federalist Party (BFP), BARMM Grand Coalition (BGC): Indigenous Settlers Sama and Minorities Alliance Party; Mahardika Party, affiliated with the MNLF under Nur Misuari; Moro Ako Party, Partido Bangon Bangsamoro, Progresibong Bangsamoro Party, People’s Consultative (Mushawara) Party, Raayat Democratic Party (Bangsamoro People’s Democratic Party) and United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), the political party of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
MILF chair Ahod “Al Haj Murad” Ebrahim, interim Chief Minister from February 2019 to March 2025, is the UBJP’s first nominee and MILF Peace Implementing Panel chair Mohagher Iqbal is second nominee.
Interim Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua is running for representative of the 3rd district of Maguindanao del Norte, as an Independent candidate.
Sheriff Abas, who served as Comelec chair from 2017 to 2022, is running as first district representative of Cotabato City under UBJP.
Ibay and Mastura, whose seats in the Bangsamoro Parliament are assured as they are running unopposed, are members of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) – Ibay from March 2025 and Mastura since September 2022.
The 80-member BTA, appointed by the President, runs the Bangsamoro Government during the transition period that should have ended on June 30, 2022 but was extended until June 30, 2025. It was again extended until October 30, 2025 and finally, until October 30, 2026.
The end of the transition period marks the shift from interim government appointed by the President to the regular Bangsamoro Government elected by the people, and from appointed interim Chief Minister to Chief Minister voted upon by the Members of Parliament.
The Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, the peace agreement signed by the Philippine government and the MILF on March 27, 2014, and the implementing law, RA 11054, provide for two tracks in the implementation of the agreement: political and normalization. The Bangsamoro Revenue Code has yet to be passed while decommissioning of MILF combatants and weapons and the other aspects of the Normalization process, have yet to be completed.
The BARMM is the lone region in the country born out of a peace agreement and the only region with a parliamentary system of government. (Carolyn O. Arguillas / MindaNews)
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