Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 58
SupersededCabinet measureAn Act Providing for the Creation of Parliamentary Districts in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao
The BARMM is divided into 32 parliamentary districts, each electing one representative, drawn on population and geographical area with a minimum of 100,000 people per district.
Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
No longer operative. A later act replaced it, or a court set it aside — check the related legislation before relying on it.
What this measure does
This is the map. Before the Bangsamoro can elect district representatives, someone has to say where the districts are — and this act says it, in 7 pages of municipalities and barangays with a population beside each one.
Thirty-two single-member districts. Lanao del Sur takes eight, Sulu seven, the two Maguindanao provinces four each, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi three each, Cotabato City two, and the Special Geographic Area a single Lone District covering all eight of its municipalities. The stated regional population is 4,944,800.
The criteria in Section 3 are conventional and, importantly, published: apportionment on population and geographical area; districts to be contiguous, compact and adjacent territory as far as practicable; and a floor of 100,000 people per district. Every district's population is printed alongside it, so the arithmetic can be checked against the rule.
Why it was proposed
The Organic Law provides for a Parliament partly elected from districts. Until the districts existed in law, there was nothing for a district representative to be elected from. This is the foundational piece of the region's electoral architecture.
Who it affects
- Every voter in the region, whose district is fixed here.
- Candidates, whose constituency boundaries this defines.
- Municipalities and, in Cotabato City, individual barangays, grouped into constituencies.
- The Special Geographic Area, whose eight municipalities are given one collective seat.
Who would implement it
- Commission on Elections, through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office, which administers elections on this map
Funding
No appropriation. The act appropriates nothing. It draws boundaries.
What changes if it becomes law
- The region acquires a defined electoral map for the first time.
- Every municipality and Cotabato City barangay is assigned to a district.
- A population floor of 100,000 per district is set.
- The Special Geographic Area gains representation as a single constituency.
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 most consequential decision in the act is the one that looks least like a decision: the Special Geographic Area gets one district for 215,433 people, while the floor for any district is 100,000. On population alone the SGA would support 2 seats. Instead its eight municipalities — territory that voted into the region in 2019 and had to be organized into municipalities the year before this act — vote as a single constituency, with a population more than double the smallest districts elsewhere. Nothing in the act explains why, and for a population whose incorporation into the region is itself recent, the difference between 1 seat and two is not a technicality.
The published population figures are the act's real contribution to accountability. Districts range from about 111,000 to over 207,000, which is a wide spread for a map drawn on a 100,000 floor, and because every figure is printed the spread is checkable by anyone. Legislatures redistricting themselves do not always leave that evidence lying about.
Two further things a reader should carry away. The act was passed and approved by the Chief Minister on the same day, which is fast for a measure of this significance. And this map did not hold: BAA 77 reconstituted the districts in 2025 and BAA 86 re-apportioned them in 2026, so anyone working out which district they vote in should start with those acts and use this one as the baseline they revised.