An Act Creating the Municipality of Bayantol in the Province Lanao Del Sur, Providing Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes

This separates 14 barangays from Maguing in Lanao del Sur — Runggayan, Kiyanodan, Cambong, Bubong Maguing, Bubong Bayabao, Balintao, Maguing Proper, Lilod Maguing, Dilimbayan, Bato Bato, Balawag, Pilimoknan, Camalig, Panayangan and Ilalag — and constitutes them as the Municipality of Bayantol, seated at Barangay Dilimbayan, which becomes the Poblacion.

It is the largest municipality creation in the registry by barangay count, taking more units from its mother municipality than any of the others — including Maguing Proper, the mother municipality's own centre.

The machinery is the standard template: boundary following the existing barangay lines, corporate existence on ratification by a majority of votes cast in a plebiscite in those barangays conducted by COMELEC and charged to COMELEC's appropriations, an appointed first municipal government, and financial assistance of not less than ₱3,000,000 a month from the Bangsamoro Government until the revenue allotment arrives.

No explanatory note is attached, and the declaration of policy recites the power to create municipalities rather than the case for this one.

The barangay list carries an implication the text does not state. Taking Maguing Proper and Lilod Maguing — the mother municipality's own poblacion area and its adjacent quarter — into the new municipality means this is not a periphery separating from a centre. It is closer to a division of the centre itself, which makes the absence of any account of what remains of Maguing the most conspicuous gap in the document.

Which barangays are being taken is the question this bill raises and does not answer. Maguing Proper and Lilod Maguing are in the list — the mother municipality's own centre and the quarter beside it. A creation bill normally detaches outlying barangays that are far from the municipal hall and hard to serve; this one detaches the hall's own neighbourhood. Whatever the local reasoning, it is not in the document, and the consequence is that Maguing would be left without the barangay that bears its name.

The plebiscite rule makes that harder rather than easier. Only the 14 departing barangays vote, and they include most of the population centre, so the people remaining in Maguing would lose their municipal seat by a vote they do not take part in. Elsewhere in this registry the same rule produced a defensible result; here it produces the sharpest version of the problem.

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.

One drafting slip in the filed copy: the separability clause refers to "Republic Act No. 1054" where the Bangsamoro Organic Law is Republic Act No. 11054. The companion bill filed the same day by the same member has the number right.