Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 54
In forceAn Act Creating the Municipality of Datu Sinsuat Balabaran in the Province of Maguindanao Del Norte, Providing Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes
If ratified, 13 barangays covering about 144 square kilometres become a distinct and independent municipality seated at Barangay Tamontaka, with appointed first officials and ₱2.5 million monthly support 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Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.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
Thirteen barangays — Tapian, Linek, Dinaig Proper, Tamontaka, Tanuel, Kusiong, Mompong, Semba, Capiton, Tambak, Badak, Awang and Dulangan — leave the Municipality of Datu Odin Sinsuat and become the Municipality of Datu Sinsuat Balabaran, seated at Tamontaka.
This is the most carefully surveyed of the three creations passed that day. It gives a land area to the square meter — 143,984,505, about 144 square kilometers — and, alone among them, annexes a full technical description of the boundary as Annex 1b. Where its siblings say the boundary follows the existing barangay lines and stop, this one attaches the survey.
The rest follows the template: corporate existence on ratification by plebiscite within 60 days, run by COMELEC and paid from the Contingent Fund; a mayor, vice-mayor and eight councillors appointed by the Chief Minister; and not less than ₱2.5 million a month from the Bangsamoro Government until the municipality receives its share of national taxes.
Why it was proposed
The Organic Law's power to redraw the region's local government map, exercised on the same day for three municipalities in Maguindanao del Norte.
Who it affects
- Residents of the thirteen named barangays.
- Datu Odin Sinsuat, which loses thirteen barangays here and ten more to BAA 55 on the same day.
- Incumbent councillors of Datu Odin Sinsuat living in the new municipality.
- Bangsamoro taxpayers, funding ₱2.5 million a month.
Who would implement it
- Commission on Elections, which conducts and supervises the plebiscite
- Office of the Chief Minister, which appoints the first municipal officials
- Bangsamoro Government, which appropriates the monthly financial assistance
Funding
Carries an appropriation. Not less than ₱2,500,000 every month until the municipality is allocated its internal revenue allotment share — at that floor, at least ₱30 million a year. The plebiscite is charged to the BARMM Contingent Fund under the fiscal year 2024 appropriations.
What changes if it becomes law
- Thirteen barangays leave Datu Odin Sinsuat and form a distinct and independent municipality, if the plebiscite passes.
- A surveyed boundary is fixed by annexed technical description.
- A monthly subsidy floor bridges the gap until national tax share arrives.
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
Read this beside BAA 55 and the scale of what happened to one municipality becomes clear. Datu Odin Sinsuat lost thirteen barangays to this act and ten more to the Sheik Abas Hamza act, both passed on 20 December 2023 and approved on the same day — twenty-three barangays in a single sitting, and neither act mentions the other. Nothing in either text says what is left of the mother municipality, what its remaining population or revenue would be, or whether anyone assessed the combined effect.
That matters because of how the plebiscite was originally drawn. Both acts, as enacted, polled only the departing barangays. The municipality losing twenty-three of them had no vote in either. Parliament came back a year later and amended both — BAA 70 for this act, BAA 71 for its sibling — to hold the plebiscite in 'the political units directly affected', which is the Organic Law's own formula and is ordinarily read to include the mother unit. The correction is the strongest evidence that the original drafting was understood to be wrong.
The technical description annexed here is the act's one clear advantage over its siblings. In a region where boundary disputes are neither academic nor rare, attaching the survey rather than gesturing at existing barangay lines is the difference between a boundary and an argument.