An Act Creating the Ministry of Agrarian Reform, Defining Its Powers and Functions, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes

This lifts agrarian reform out of MAFAR and makes it a ministry of its own — the Ministry of Agrarian Reform — as the principal agency assisting in the region's agrarian reform programme.

The structure runs from a Minister and Deputy Minister appointed by the Chief Minister down through ministry services to Provincial Offices in every province and as many Municipal Offices as required. Section 12 keeps the chain of command explicit: until and unless a law devolves these powers to local government units, the Minister exercises technical and administrative control and supervision over the provincial and municipal offices.

The provision that matters most is Section 9, which places the Bangsamoro Agrarian Reform Adjudication Board inside the new ministry. Agrarian reform is not primarily a service-delivery function — it is an adjudicative one, deciding competing claims to land — and the Board is the body that does the deciding.

The transition mechanics are identical in all 3 and unusually careful for a reorganisation. The relevant MAFAR units and the corresponding Office of the Bangsamoro Director-General are abolished, with their powers, funds, appropriations, records, equipment, property and personnel transferred across. The whole transfer — including the new internal structure, staffing pattern, operating system and revised budget — must be completed within 6 months, and existing staff hold their posts in holdover capacity until new appointments issue. In filling the new positions, preference goes to personnel of the abolished office, provided they meet Civil Service qualification standards, with seniority breaking ties between equally qualified candidates.

Agrarian reform sits awkwardly inside a ministry whose other 2 mandates are production. Agriculture and fisheries are about output; agrarian reform is about who owns the land that produces it, and it works through claims, awards and adjudication rather than through extension and inputs.

The bill does not argue this at length, but the inclusion of the Adjudication Board makes the case structurally. A quasi-judicial body determining land rights is a different kind of institution from an office distributing seed, and folding both into 1 ministry means the adjudication competes for attention with the planting season.

Putting the Adjudication Board inside the new ministry is the decision worth arguing about, and the bill does not acknowledge that there is an argument. A board that adjudicates land claims sits better at arm's length from the ministry that implements the programme those claims arise under — otherwise the body deciding whether an award was correctly made reports, through the same hierarchy, to the office that made it. Against that, an adjudication board with no ministry behind it has no capacity, and the bill's structure at least gives the Board a home whose whole attention is the subject. The filed copy chooses institutional capacity over separation and says nothing about the trade.

The staffing provisions are the most humane thing in the package, and they are easy to overlook. A reorganisation abolishes offices, which in practice means people losing posts; this bill requires preference for the personnel of the abolished office, subject only to Civil Service qualification standards, and then makes seniority the tiebreaker between equally qualified applicants. Those 2 provisos are what stop a restructuring from becoming a rehiring exercise, and they appear in all 3 bills of the package.

Two drafting artefacts show the template these bills were cut from. Section 15 says existing personnel keep their posts "at MAF" — a ministry that does not exist under either the old or the proposed name — and refers to the abolition of offices "as specified in Section 16", when Section 16 is the appropriations clause and the abolition is in Section 13. And Section 12, in a bill about agrarian reform, speaks of devolving powers "over agriculture" and of carrying out "agriculture, fisheries, and agrarian reform programs". The 3 bills were plainly drafted from 1 pattern, and the substitutions were not finished.

These 3 bills are one proposal filed as three. MP Mawallil lodged Bill No. 11, Bill No. 12 and Bill No. 15 together in September 2022, and read in sequence they take the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Agrarian Reform apart: Bill 11 lifts agrarian reform into a ministry of its own, Bill 12 does the same for fisheries and aquatic resources, and Bill 15 renames what is left the Ministry of Agriculture and reorganises it around that narrower mandate. Each bill draws its start-up money from the corresponding line in MAFAR's existing appropriation, so the package is designed to be budget-neutral at the point of separation. All 3 remain at Second Reading, Committee Stage; MAFAR is still 1 ministry.