An Act Creating the Municipality of Datu Balabaran Sinsuat in the Province of Maguindanao Del Norte, Providing Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes

This takes 13 barangays out of Datu Odin Sinsuat — Tapian, Linek, Dinaig Proper, Tamontaka, Tanuel, Kusiong, Mompong, Semba, Capiton, Tambak, Badak, Awang and Dulangan — and constitutes them as the Municipality of Datu Balabaran Sinsuat in Maguindanao del Norte, seated at Tamontaka, which becomes the Poblacion.

It is the most surveyed of the 3 municipality bills filed that season. Section 4 states a land area of 143,984,505 square meters, about 144 square kilometers, and attaches a full technical description of the boundary as Annex 1b — where the companion bills describe the boundary as following the existing barangay lines and leave it there.

Nothing takes effect on approval. Corporate existence arrives only on ratification by a majority of the votes cast in a plebiscite held in the constituent barangays within 60 days, conducted and supervised by COMELEC through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office, with the cost charged to COMELEC's own available funds for the fiscal year.

If it passes, the first municipal government is appointed rather than elected: a mayor, a vice-mayor and 8 Sangguniang Bayan members named by the Chief Minister immediately after ratification, holding office until successors are elected at the next regular election. Incumbent Sangguniang Bayan members of Datu Odin Sinsuat who actually reside in the new municipality serve out their terms in the mother municipality.

And because a new municipality has no revenue share until the national allocation reaches it, the Bangsamoro Government must provide not less than ₱2,500,000 every month to administer and operate it in the meantime.

There is no explanatory note attached to the filed copy. The declaration of policy states the power rather than the reason: in the exercise of genuine autonomy and self-governance the Bangsamoro Government may create, divide, merge, abolish or substantially alter the boundaries of municipalities and barangays by a law of Parliament, and the units affected are entitled to their share of national taxes, provided a majority in a plebiscite approves.

So the case for this particular municipality is not made in the document. What the bill supplies is the list of barangays, the seat, and the money.

Section 3 of the filed copy names the wrong municipality. It reads: "The seat of government of the Municipality of Sheik Abas Hamza shall be established in Barangay Tamontaka" — Sheik Abas Hamza being the subject of Bill No. 191, filed by the same member on the same day, whose seat is Barangay Bugawas. The barangay is right and the municipality is wrong, which is what a copied template looks like when one substitution is missed. The enacted act carries the correct name.

The name itself also changed on the way through. This bill creates "Datu Balabaran Sinsuat"; BAA 54 creates "Datu Sinsuat Balabaran". Two words swapped in the name of a municipality is the kind of amendment that leaves no record of why.

The plebiscite is the provision to read hardest, and the reason is arithmetic rather than principle. Section 1 conditions the creation on approval "in the political units directly affected", and Section 5 reads that as the departing barangays alone. Datu Odin Sinsuat loses 13 barangays to this bill and 10 to Bill No. 191 — 23 in total, both enacted on the same day — and has no vote in either. Neither document mentions the other, states what remains of the mother municipality, or records that anyone assessed the two together.

The survey annex is this bill's genuine contribution. In a region where boundary disputes are not academic, attaching a technical description rather than saying the line follows the barangays is the difference between a boundary that can be walked and one that has to be argued.