Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 41
In forceCabinet measureAn Act Creating the Municipality of Pahamuddin, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes
If ratified, 12 barangays covering 6,253.72 hectares become a distinct and independent municipality seated at Libungan Torreta, with appointed first officials chosen with due regard to women's representation, and monthly financial assistance until its tax share arrives.
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Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.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
Twelve barangays of Pigcawayan in North Cotabato become the Municipality of Pahamuddin, seated at Libungan Torreta, inside the Special Geographic Area of the Bangsamoro.
Section 2 carries the fact that explains the whole act: these barangays *petitioned and voted to be included in the BARMM in the 2019 plebiscite*. They chose the region 4 years earlier and had been sitting inside it while still administratively attached to a municipality outside it. This act resolves that.
The boundary work is the most thorough in the registry. The signed copy carries a political boundary map and a full surveyed technical description — bearings, distances, metes and bounds, an area of 6,253.7231 hectares, prepared by a geodetic engineer and approved by the Minister.
As with every creation act, nothing happens without a plebiscite, held within 60 days and run by COMELEC through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office. The Chief Minister then appoints the first mayor, vice-mayor and eight councillors — and Section 7 adds a requirement absent from the Maguindanao creations: those appointments must be made with due regard to the representation of women of the Bangsamoro.
Why it was proposed
The 2019 plebiscite left the region with an unusual inheritance: sixty-three barangays scattered across North Cotabato that had voted to join, but which belonged to municipalities that had not. Governing them from a distance through mother municipalities outside the region was never a permanent arrangement. This act, and its six siblings, turn those barangays into municipalities of the Bangsamoro.
Who it affects
- Residents of the twelve named barangays, who voted to join the region in 2019 and now vote on their own municipality.
- Pigcawayan, North Cotabato, which loses twelve barangays — and which sits outside the BARMM entirely.
- Women of the Bangsamoro, whose representation must be considered in the first appointments.
- Incumbent Pigcawayan councillors resident in the new municipality.
Who would implement it
- Commission on Elections, through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office, which conducts the plebiscite
- Office of the Chief Minister, which appoints the first municipal officials
- Bangsamoro Government, which provides the monthly financial assistance
Funding
Carries an appropriation. The act requires monthly financial assistance until the municipality receives its national tax allotment share but states no amount — a notable difference from the Maguindanao creation acts of December 2023, which each specify not less than ₱2.5 million a month. Plebiscite costs come from the current fiscal year appropriations.
What changes if it becomes law
- Twelve barangays that voted into the region in 2019 gain a municipality of their own inside it.
- A surveyed boundary is fixed by map and technical description.
- Women's representation becomes a stated consideration in the first appointments.
- The municipality becomes entitled to a share of national taxes.
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
This act is the administrative completion of a vote taken 4 years earlier, and that is what distinguishes it from the region's other municipality creations. The Maguindanao acts carve new units out of existing Bangsamoro municipalities — a redrawing of internal lines. This one takes territory that chose the region in a plebiscite and had no proper place in it, and gives it one. The mother municipality here is not a Bangsamoro unit at all; it is Pigcawayan, in a province outside the region.
Two drafting details repay attention. The boundary documentation is the best in the registry — a map and a full geodetic survey with metes and bounds, rather than the bare reference to 'existing barangay boundaries' that the Maguindanao acts mostly rely on. For territory transferred between regions, that thoroughness is not decorative; it is the difference between a settled border and a future dispute.
The second is Section 7's instruction that the first appointments be made with due regard to the representation of women of the Bangsamoro. The three Maguindanao creation acts passed 4 months later contain no such clause. It is a soft obligation — 'due regard', with no quota and no remedy — but it is present here and absent there, and nothing explains the difference.
What this act does not say is how much money the new municipality gets. It promises monthly assistance and names no figure, where the later acts name ₱2.5 million. For a municipality with no tax base and no revenue allotment yet, that is the most practically important number in the law, and it is missing.