Filed
First Reading
Referred to the Committee on Local Government, Committee on Finance, Budget and ManagementNow
Parliament Bill No. 271
In committeeAn Act Creating the Municipality of Pilintangan in the Province Lanao Del Sur, Providing Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes
Filed
First Reading
Referred to the Committee on Local Government, Committee on Finance, Budget and ManagementNow
Under committee study or floor debate. Amendments are still possible, and this is the stage where public input carries the most weight.
What this measure does
This takes 11 barangays out of Wao in Lanao del Sur — Western (Poblacion), Pilintangan, Kadingilan, Buntongan, Balatin, Panang, Mimbuaya, Park Area, Muslim Village, Buot and East Kili Kili — and constitutes them as the Municipality of Pilintangan.
The seat goes to Barangay Pilintangan, and Section 3 does something no other municipality bill in the registry does: it provides that the seat "shall be known hereafter as the *Bandara Ingud*" rather than as the Poblacion.
The rest follows the established template. The territorial boundary follows the existing barangay lines. Corporate existence arrives only on ratification by a majority of the votes cast in a plebiscite in the constituent barangays, conducted by COMELEC and charged to COMELEC's own appropriations for the year. And the Bangsamoro Government must provide financial assistance for the new municipal government of not less than ₱3,000,000 every month until it is allocated its share in the revenue allotment.
Why it was proposed
There is no explanatory note. The declaration of policy states the power rather than the reason: in the exercise of genuine autonomy the Bangsamoro Government may create, divide, merge, abolish or substantially alter the boundaries of municipalities and barangays by a law of Parliament, subject to a plebiscite in the units directly affected.
What the barangay list suggests is a particular geography. Wao sits at the eastern edge of Lanao del Sur, and the names being separated — Muslim Village, Park Area, East Kili Kili — read like the settled quarters of a single populated area rather than a scatter of upland barangays.
Who it affects
- Residents of the 11 barangays leaving Wao, who alone vote on whether the municipality exists.
- Wao, Lanao del Sur, which loses 11 barangays and has no vote on it.
- Incumbent Wao councillors resident in the new municipality, who serve out their terms in the mother municipality.
- The Chief Minister, who appoints the first mayor, vice-mayor and 8 Sangguniang Bayan members.
- The Bangsamoro budget, committed to at least ₱3 million a month for an unstated period.
Who would implement it
- Commission on Elections, through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office — conduct and supervision of the plebiscite
- The Chief Minister — appointment of the first municipal government
- The Bangsamoro Government — monthly financial assistance pending the national tax allocation
Funding
Carries an appropriation. Not less than ₱3,000,000 every month for the administration and operation of the new municipal government until it is allocated its share in the revenue allotment — at least ₱36 million a year at that floor. The plebiscite is charged to COMELEC's available funds under the current fiscal year appropriations.
What changes if it becomes law
- Wao loses 11 barangays to a new municipality, subject to a vote held only among them.
- The municipal seat is designated the Bandara Ingud rather than the Poblacion.
- The first municipal government is appointed rather than elected.
- The regional budget takes on a monthly floor of at least ₱3 million.
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
Bandara Ingud is the detail worth stopping on. Every other municipality created or proposed in this registry names its seat the Poblacion — a Spanish colonial administrative term that Philippine local government has carried for more than a century. This bill replaces it with a Maranao one. For a region whose whole constitutional argument rests on governing itself in its own terms, changing the word for the centre of a town is a small act with a clear logic, and it is the only place in the registry where anyone has done it.
The subsidy is the fiscal story and it is not a small one. Both bills raise the bridging subsidy. Every earlier municipality bill in this registry — the 8 Special Geographic Area bills of December 2022, and the Nuling, Datu Balabaran Sinsuat and Sheik Abas Hamza bills of June 2023 — sets the monthly floor at ₱2,500,000. These 2, filed in January 2024, set it at ₱3,000,000. The section heading changed too, from "Internal Revenue Allotment" to "National Tax Allocation", which is the terminology that followed the national reallocation of local government shares. Neither bill explains the increase, and at ₱3 million a month each new municipality costs the region at least ₱36 million a year until its national share arrives.
The plebiscite design carries the same asymmetry as every other creation bill here: only the departing barangays vote. In the Special Geographic Area cases there was an answer to that — those barangays had already voted in 2019 to join the region. Here there is none. Wao loses 11 barangays by a regional law on which its remaining residents have no say, and no document states what is left of the municipality afterwards.
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