Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 70
In forceCabinet measureAn Act Amending Section 5 of Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 54, Otherwise Known as the “Act Creating the Municipality of Datu Sinsuat Balabaran in the Province of Maguindanao Del Norte, Providing Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes”
The franchise for the ratification vote widens. The 60-day deadline and the requirement of a majority of votes cast are unchanged.
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Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.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
One sentence is rewritten, and it changes who gets a vote.
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 54 created the Municipality of Datu Sinsuat Balabaran and made its existence conditional on a plebiscite — but confined that plebiscite to the barangays being carved out. This act replaces that with a plebiscite 'called for the purpose in the political units directly affected'.
Everything else stands: ratification still needs a majority of the votes cast by qualified voters, and the vote must still be held within 60 days after approval of the Act. The barangays, the seat of government, the appointed first officials and the ₱2.5 million monthly assistance are all untouched.
Why it was proposed
The Organic Law conditions the creation of a municipality on approval 'by a majority of the votes cast in a plebiscite in the political units directly affected' — and BAA 54 recited that formula in its policy section while then, in Section 5, polling only the departing barangays. This amendment closes that gap by putting the Organic Law's own words into the operative provision.
Who it affects
- Voters in the barangays that would make up Datu Sinsuat Balabaran, who still decide but no longer decide alone.
- Voters in the mother municipality, which loses territory and population and is on the ordinary reading a unit directly affected.
- COMELEC, which must call the plebiscite on the wider basis.
Who would implement it
- Commission on Elections, which calls and conducts the plebiscite
Funding
No appropriation. The act appropriates nothing. Plebiscite costs remain charged to the BARMM Contingent Fund under the arrangement in BAA 54.
What changes if it becomes law
- The franchise for the ratification vote widens from the departing barangays to the political units directly affected.
- The operative section now tracks the Organic Law's own wording.
- The majority-of-votes-cast test and the 60-day deadline are unchanged.
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 a correction, and a revealing one. The creating act opened by reciting the Organic Law's requirement — ratification in the political units directly affected — and then, 3 sections later, provided for a plebiscite only in the barangays being taken out. Those are different franchises, and the difference matters: a municipality losing territory has an obvious interest in whether it loses it, and Philippine practice has long treated the mother unit as directly affected.
Parliament took roughly a year to come back and fix it, in identical terms, for both municipalities created that day. The pairing of BAA 70 and 71 shows this was understood as a defect in the template rather than in one act — which raises the question of what happens to the third creation passed the same sitting, BAA 53 for Nuling, whose Section 5 carries the same narrow wording and has no corresponding amendment in the index.
One loose end the amendment leaves. The sixty-day clock runs from 'approval of the Act', and the act does not say whether that is the creating act — long since approved — or this amending one. For a provision whose entire purpose is to fix the terms of a vote, the timing of that vote is left ambiguous.