Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 11
In forceCabinet measureAn Act Defining the Power of Appointment in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and for Other Purposes
Appointment authority is fixed by position rather than negotiated office by office. Salary Grade 25 and above sits with the Chief Minister; SG 24 and below sits with each head of office; Parliament's own staff sit with the Speaker.
Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.
What this measure does
This answers one question: in a brand-new government, who has the power to hire?
The answer is drawn at Salary Grade 25. Everything at 25 and above — deputy ministers, directors, heads of ministries, offices, commissions, boards, agencies and bureaus, and the heads of Bangsamoro-owned corporations with their own charters — is the Chief Minister's appointment. Everything at 24 and below is appointed by the head of the office doing the hiring.
Parliament is carved out. The Speaker appoints and administratively supervises its legislative personnel, secretariat and career staff, including contractual posts and contracts of service — but has to consult the Chief Minister on anything at SG 25 or above. Staff working for an individual Member are appointed only on that member's recommendation, and that member supervises them directly.
One restriction is easy to miss: a head of an office attached to a ministry does not hold this appointing power at all, unless the law creating that office says otherwise.
Why it was proposed
The region's government was assembled at speed out of ministries, bureaus, boards, commissions and inherited agencies, and nothing said who could appoint whom. The act grounds itself on Article VII, Section 32 of the Organic Law and draws one line through the whole structure.
Who it affects
- Anyone applying for a job in the Bangsamoro Government — the salary grade of the post decides which office rules on your appointment.
- Heads of ministries, offices, commissions, boards and agencies, whose appointing power is now defined and capped at SG 24.
- Heads of offices attached to a ministry, who are expressly excluded unless their own charter says otherwise.
- Members of Parliament, who gain the sole right to recommend and directly supervise their own staff.
- The Chief Minister, in whom every senior appointment across the government is concentrated.
Who would implement it
- The Chief Minister, for Salary Grade 25 and above and for heads of agencies and chartered corporations
- The Speaker of Parliament, for Parliament's own career, coterminous and contractual staff
- Heads of ministries, offices, commissions, boards and agencies, for Salary Grade 24 and below
- Civil Service laws, rules and regulations, which the act reads its power of appointment against
Funding
No appropriation. The act appropriates nothing. It allocates authority rather than money.
What changes if it becomes law
- Appointment authority is fixed by salary grade rather than settled office by office.
- Heads of attached offices lose any assumed appointing power unless their charter grants it.
- Parliament's staffing is separated from the executive's, with a consultation duty at the senior end.
- MPs get the exclusive right to recommend and supervise their own staff.
- Merit, and consideration of gender and ethnic balance, become the stated standard for every appointment.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
The line at Salary Grade 25 is the whole act, and it is drawn high. Every director, every deputy minister, every agency head and every chartered-corporation head in the region is appointed by one person. That is defensible in a transition government being built from nothing — someone has to be able to staff it quickly — but it is a great deal of patronage running through a single office, and the act attaches no confirmation step, no publication requirement and no appeal.
Section 5 is the part to watch. It requires an 'independent, strictly merit-based, and credible' process and says appointments shall consider gender and ethnic balance. Every word of that is a standard; none of it is a mechanism. There is no panel, no published criteria, no target, no reporting, and no remedy for an applicant who believes it was ignored. The clause states an aspiration in the register of a rule.
The most quietly consequential line is in Section 3: heads of offices attached to ministries may not appoint unless their own creating law says so. That reaches into the autonomy of every attached body in the region, and it is set out as a definition rather than as a provision — the kind of thing that decides real disputes and is easy to read past.