Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 42
In forceCabinet measureAn Act Creating the Municipality of Kadayangan, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes
If ratified, the 7 barangays become a distinct and independent municipality seated at Barangay Kapinpilan, with first officials appointed with due regard to women's representation and monthly financial assistance until its national 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Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.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
7 barangays of Midsayap in North Cotabato become the Municipality of Kadayangan, seated at Barangay Kapinpilan, inside the Special Geographic Area of the Bangsamoro.
Section 2 carries the fact that explains the 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 municipalities outside it. This act resolves that.
Nothing happens without a further vote. A plebiscite is held within 60 days, run by COMELEC through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office and paid from the current year's regional appropriations. The Chief Minister then appoints the first mayor, vice-mayor and eight councillors — with due regard, the act says, to the representation of women of the Bangsamoro — and the Bangsamoro Government provides monthly financial assistance until the municipality receives its share of national taxes.
Why it was proposed
The 2019 plebiscite left the region with an unusual inheritance: barangays scattered across North Cotabato that had voted to join, but which belonged to municipalities that had not. Governing them at a distance through mother municipalities outside the region was never a permanent arrangement. This act, and its six siblings passed the same day, turn those barangays into municipalities of the Bangsamoro.
Who it affects
- Residents of the 7 named barangays, who voted to join the region in 2019 and now vote on their own municipality.
- Midsayap, North Cotabato, which loses barangays — and which sit outside the BARMM entirely.
- Women of the Bangsamoro, whose representation must be considered in the first appointments.
- Incumbent councillors of the mother municipalities who reside in the new one.
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
- 7 barangays that voted into the region in 2019 gain a municipality of their own inside it.
- 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 is the administrative completion of a vote taken 4 years earlier, and that is what distinguishes the Special Geographic Area acts from the region's other municipality creations. The Maguindanao acts carve new units out of existing Bangsamoro municipalities — a redrawing of internal lines. These take territory that chose the region in a plebiscite and had no proper place in it, and give it one. The mother municipalities here are not Bangsamoro units at all.
Seven of these acts were passed on a single day, on an identical template. That uniformity is a strength — the same franchise, the same appointment rule, the same assistance promise for every one of them — and it is also where the weakness sits, because the template omits the same three things 7 times over: no land area in the operative sections, no population, and no peso figure for the monthly assistance. For a municipality with no tax base and no revenue allotment yet, that last number is the most practically important term in the law, and none of the seven states it. 4 months later the Maguindanao creations would name ₱2.5 million a month; these do not.
One provision the later acts dropped is worth marking here: Section 7's instruction that the first appointments be made with due regard to the representation of women of the Bangsamoro. It is soft — 'due regard', no quota, no remedy — but it is in all seven Special Geographic Area acts and in none of the three Maguindanao ones.