An Act Creating the Municipality of Sheik Abas Hamza in the Province of Maguindanao Del Norte, Providing Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes

This separates 10 barangays from Datu Odin Sinsuat — Labungan, Taviran, Baka, Sapalan, Sifaran, Bugawas, Bitu, Kurintem, Margues and Makir — and constitutes them as the Municipality of Sheik Abas Hamza in Maguindanao del Norte, seated at Barangay Bugawas, which becomes the Poblacion.

Section 4 states a land area of 164,387,474 square meters, about 164 square kilometers, with the territorial boundary following the existing lines of the constituent barangays and a technical description referred to as Annex 1b.

The rest is the same scheme as its companion bill. Corporate existence depends on a plebiscite in the constituent barangays within 60 days of approval, conducted by COMELEC through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office and charged to COMELEC's available funds. On ratification the Chief Minister appoints the mayor, the vice-mayor and 8 Sangguniang Bayan members, who serve until the next regular election; incumbent Datu Odin Sinsuat councillors who live in the new municipality finish their terms in the mother municipality. And the Bangsamoro Government provides not less than ₱2,500,000 a month to run the place until its share of national taxes arrives.

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.

This bill and Bill No. 190 are one drafting exercise carried out twice, and the evidence is in the other document: Section 3 of Bill 190 names this municipality as the one whose seat it is establishing. Read as a pair, they take 23 barangays out of Datu Odin Sinsuat, and they were enacted on the same day as BAA 55 and BAA 54.

What neither bill does is account for the mother municipality. Each polls only the barangays it is taking, on the reading that those are the political units directly affected. Neither says what Datu Odin Sinsuat is left with — how many barangays, how much population, how much revenue — and neither mentions the other bill. The combined effect of the 2 measures on the municipality they are both carving up appears in no document either of them contains.

The money is the part that compounds. A monthly floor of ₱2.5 million with no end date is an open commitment, since the internal revenue allotment arrives on a national allocation cycle the region does not control. Two municipalities created together carry at least ₱60 million a year between them, and a third bill that season — Nuling — brings it to ₱90 million. None of the 3 bills mentions the others, and none states how long the bridge is expected to be.

One structural point worth stating plainly, because it runs through all 3. A municipality is created to bring government closer to the people who live in it, and begins with a mayor, a vice-mayor and 8 councillors, none of whom those people chose. The appointment is temporary by design — it runs to the next regular election — but in a region where regular elections have themselves been postponed more than once, the temporary arrangement is the one that has to be judged.