An Act Reconstituting the Parliamentary Districts in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Amending for the Purpose Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 58, Entitled “an Act Providing for the Creation of the Parliamentary Districts in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao”

This redraws the entire electoral map of the Bangsamoro, and the headline is what is missing from it.

The region still has thirty-two single-member parliamentary districts. But Sulu — which held seven of them under the 2024 map, on a population of over a million — has none. Its seats are distributed among everyone else: Basilan rises from three districts to four, Lanao del Sur from eight to nine, Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur from four to five each, Tawi-Tawi from three to four, Cotabato City from two to three, and the Special Geographic Area from one to two. The stated regional population falls from 4,944,800 to 4,545,486.

The act never explains why. The only indication of Sulu's status is in Section 3, a transitory provision drafted for a future in which 'the province of Sulu rejoins the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao' — at which point, it says, Congress may allocate at least seven parliamentary district seats to it.

Two further provisions handle the practical mess of redrawing a map mid-election. Section 5 lets candidates who had already filed keep their candidacy in the district where they filed, even if the barangay where they are registered has been moved elsewhere — with voting confined to the new boundaries. And Section 4 provides that where a newly created district has no elected representative after the filing deadline, the President of the Philippines appoints an interim one.

The act states no purpose beyond reconstituting the districts. What it does is redistribute the seats of a province it treats as outside the region, and rebalance the map among those remaining.

The Special Geographic Area's second seat is the quiet correction. Under the 2024 map its eight municipalities — territory that voted into the region in 2019 and was organized into municipalities only the year before — shared a single Lone District of 215,433 people, more than double the smallest districts elsewhere and comfortably enough for 2 seats on the act's own 100,000 floor. This act splits it in two. Nothing says that was a fix, but it is one.

Section 3 is the provision with the longest reach, and its most striking feature is who it names. If Sulu rejoins, it is *Congress* — the national legislature — that 'may allocate at least seven Parliamentary District Seats'. A regional parliament redistricting itself has just written the restoration of a province's representation out of its own hands and into Manila's. Whether that reflects a legal necessity or a political judgement, the act does not say, and for a region whose whole purpose is self-governance it is a notable deferral.

Section 4 sits oddly beside it. An interim parliamentary district representative — with the full rights, duties and privileges of an elected member — appointed by the President of the Philippines. It is a narrow contingency, triggered only where redistricting outruns the candidacy calendar, and the appointee's term ends automatically at the next election. But it means a seat in the Bangsamoro Parliament can, in defined circumstances, be filled by the national executive rather than by voters.

One practical warning for anyone using this record: check your district against this act, not against BAA 58. The regrouping is thorough, and a municipality's district number has changed in many places even where the province's seat count did not.