DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 26 May) – Information awareness on the historic Bangsamoro Parliament election in May 2025 needs to be heightened as voters still have no clear idea on how to select the Chief Minister, an election watchdog official said on Sunday.
Lawyer Ona Caritos, executive director of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE), said there is still confusion on how to vote for the Chief Minister.
“In a parliamentary system, the Chief Minister is not elected directly by the people. Voters vote the Members of Parliament, then the members will vote among themselves who will be the Chief Minister,” Ona told the “Reporting the BARMM Election” training for journalists on Sunday, May 26, in Davao City.
For the first time, voters in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) will elect their parliament members on May 12, 2025, simultaneous with the midterm national and local elections. The BARMM’s voting population as of the May 2022 elections was 2.58 million.
Under the Bangsamoro Electoral Code (BEC) approved by the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) in March 2023, the parliament shall be composed of 80 members, with 40 seats allocated for regional political parties, 32 single-member parliamentary districts and eight sectoral representatives.
The 80-member BTA, which governs the interim Bangsamoro government, is led by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) with 41 seats and the rest held by government nominees.
The creation of the Bangsamoro region is the key component of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, which the Philippine government and the MILF signed in 2014 after 17 years of peace negotiations.
The Bangsamoro region was created in January 2019 following the ratification of Republic Act 11054 or the Organic Law for the BARMM.
Ona said that voters in the BARMM will vote the parliament members as well as the candidates for the mid-term national (Senators) and local (governors, mayors and councilors) elections next year.
In the Bangsamoro Parliament election, she said voters will elect 32 single-district representatives and the regional parliamentary political party (RPPP) of their choice.
Each regional political party must nominate 40 names, 30 percent of whom must be women or 12 out of the 40, according to the BEC.
On the other hand, each of the sectoral representatives will be elected by each sector during an assembly of accredited sectoral organizations, Ona said.
Sectoral representatives must be a bona fide member of the sector he or she seeks to represent; must be a member of either an RPPP through its Sectoral Wing or parliamentary sectoral party organization (PSO) duly registered and accredited by the Commission on Elections, through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office.
To prove bona fide membership in the sector sought to be represented, the candidate or assembly nominee for sectoral representative must secure a certificate of membership from the agencies concerned.
The guidelines for certification have been released by the Bangsamoro Women Commission, for women; Bangsamoro Youth Commission, for youth; Ministry of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs, for non-Moro IPs; Office of Settler Communities, for settler communities; and Bangsamoro Commission for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, for traditional leaders. (Bong Sarmiento / MindaNews)
