Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 90
In forceAn Act Renaming the Municipality of Datu Blah T. Sinsuat, Maguindanao Del Norte to Municipality of West Upi, Maguindanao Del Norte
If ratified, the municipality carries a geographic name rather than one honouring an individual. Nothing else about its territory, government or status changes.
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Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.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
This changes a municipality's name from Datu Blah T. Sinsuat to West Upi — from a person to a place.
It does not do so by fiat. Section 3 makes the renaming conditional on ratification by a majority of the votes cast by qualified voters of the municipality itself, in a plebiscite run by COMELEC under the Local Government Code's own procedure for changes of name, and paid for from the Contingent Fund of the Office of the Chief Minister.
Section 4 reaches back into the region's institutional history: it amends Muslim Mindanao Autonomy Act No. 198, the law of the former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that created the municipality in the first place.
Why it was proposed
The act declares a policy of genuine and meaningful local autonomy — subdivisions developing as self-reliant communities and effective partners in regional development — but offers no reason specific to this name. Whatever prompted the change is not in the document.
Who it affects
- Residents and voters of the municipality, who decide the question.
- Anyone holding records, registrations or addresses in the municipality's existing name.
- COMELEC, which conducts and supervises the plebiscite.
Who would implement it
- Commission on Elections, conducting the plebiscite under paragraph (g), Section 13 of Republic Act 7160
Funding
Carries an appropriation. No amount stated. Plebiscite expenses are charged to the Contingent Fund of the Office of the Chief Minister.
What changes if it becomes law
- The municipality would carry a geographic name rather than a personal one.
- The former ARMM law that created it is amended.
- Nothing about its territory, government, boundaries or status changes.
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
Renaming a municipality named for a person is rarely only an administrative act, and this one is put to a vote rather than imposed — which is the right instinct, and matches how the region has handled its other changes to the local government map. The franchise here also raises none of the difficulty seen in the creation acts: only one municipality is affected, and only its voters decide.
What is missing is a clock. The municipality-creation acts require the plebiscite within 60 days of approval; this one sets no deadline at all. A renaming that is conditional on a vote, with no date by which the vote must happen, can sit indefinitely in a state where the law has been passed and nothing has changed — and a reader checking the register would find an act in force whose operative provision has never been triggered.
The other silence is practical. A municipality's name appears on birth certificates, land titles, business registrations, school records and every address in it. The act provides no transition arrangements for any of that.
Sources