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

This separates 18 barangays from Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte — Matengen, Ladia, Pigcalagan, Alamada, Raguisi, Pinaring, Damaniog, Ibotegen, Banatin, Nara, Kakar, Katidtuan, Maidapa, Kapimpilan, Bulibod, Kabuntalan, Nalinan and Katamlangan — and constitutes them as the Municipality of Nuling, seated at Barangay Pinaring, which becomes the Poblacion.

Unlike the 2 Datu Odin Sinsuat bills, this one states no land area and attaches no technical description: the territorial boundary simply follows the existing boundaries of the constituent barangays. What it does attach is a population table, barangay by barangay.

The machinery is the same template. Corporate existence on ratification by a majority of the votes cast in a plebiscite in those barangays within 60 days of approval, run by COMELEC through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office and paid out of COMELEC's available funds. On ratification, the Chief Minister appoints a mayor, a vice-mayor and 8 Sangguniang Bayan members who hold office until the next regular election, while incumbent Sultan Kudarat councillors resident in the new municipality serve out their terms in the mother municipality. And not less than ₱2,500,000 a month from the Bangsamoro Government until the revenue allotment 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.

The municipality grew by one barangay between filing and enactment. Section 2 of this bill lists 18; BAA 53 creates Nuling out of 19. Nothing in the published record says which barangay was added or why, and a barangay is not a rounding error — it is a population, a boundary, and a vote in the plebiscite that decides whether the municipality exists at all.

The plebiscite bill also changed hands. This version charges the cost to COMELEC's own available funds; the enacted act charges it to the BARMM Contingent Fund under the 2024 budget. That is the region declining to spend a national agency's money on a regional decision, and it applies across all 3 creations passed that day.

What this bill has that its 2 companions do not is a population table. Attaching barangay-by-barangay figures is the closest any of the 3 comes to showing the viability arithmetic — how many people the new municipality will have, and therefore what the ₱2.5 million monthly floor is buying per head and how long the bridge to a revenue allotment might need to be. It is also the only one of the 3 that leaves the boundary undescribed, so between them the Nuling bill counts its people and the Datu Odin Sinsuat bills survey their ground, and no bill does both.

The plebiscite question is the same here and cuts the same way. Sultan Kudarat loses 18 barangays and does not vote on it, because Section 5 reads "the political units directly affected" as the departing barangays alone.