An Act Establishing the Administrative Capital of the Bangsamoro Government in the Municipality of Parang, Province of Maguindanao, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes

This moves the capital. The administrative capital of the Bangsamoro Government is established in Parang, Maguindanao, where a Bangsamoro Government Administrative Center is to be built to house the Office of the Chief Minister, the Parliament, and the ministries, offices and agencies.

Section 3 is the provision with teeth. Invoking Parliament's power to create, divide, merge, abolish or substantially alter the boundaries of municipalities and barangays, it declares the Government Center within Parang "autonomous from the local government unit" and places it directly under the control and supervision of the regional government. Consultations and dialogues with the local governments concerned and other stakeholders are to be conducted to ensure a smooth transition.

The work is given to a Committee on the Establishment of Administrative Capital: the Senior Minister as chair plus 4 members — the Minister of Finance, Budget and Management, the Minister of Public Works, the Minister of Environment, Natural Resources and Energy, and the Director-General of the Bangsamoro Planning and Development Office. It leads the preparation of masterplans, strategies, processes and a timetable, convenes immediately on approval, and ceases to exist when the objectives are fully implemented — which shall not exceed 10 years unless Parliament extends it.

Funding is charged against annual appropriations, with no amount stated. The Committee has 90 days from effectivity to issue implementing rules in consultation with agencies and stakeholders.

The declaration of policy is a claim of competence rather than an argument for Parang. In the exercise of its right to self-governance the region is free to pursue its political, economic, social and cultural development, and it has the power to create offices and organize its own bureaucracy to ensure efficient and effective delivery of government programs and services.

No explanatory note is attached, and the bill offers no reason for choosing Parang over anywhere else — including over Cotabato City, which had hosted the regional government since 2019 and which the bill never mentions.

The carve-out was narrowed on the way to enactment, and that is the change to read first. This bill declares the Government Center "autonomous from the local government unit" and "directly under the control and supervision of the regional government" — a wholesale exclusion of Parang's jurisdiction over the site. BAA 37 replaced that with a test: the center sits outside local policies, measures and issuances that would run counter to the primacy of uninterrupted government service. Still broad, but it is a standard a dispute can be argued against, where the filed version simply removed the municipality from the picture.

The committee was widened and the decision taken back. This bill lets a 5-member cabinet committee prepare the masterplan with no external check; the enacted act adds the transport minister and the cultural heritage commission, invites civil society organizations as observers, and makes the choice of site subject to Parliament's approval. A cabinet bill that would have settled the region's capital inside the cabinet came out of Parliament requiring Parliament's own sign-off.

The act also filled 2 silences. This version never mentions Cotabato City; BAA 37 requires the existing center there to be improved rather than abandoned, preserved for its historical value, and renamed once the move is complete. And this version sets no pace, while the act requires the physical transfer to proceed gradually, only as buildings, roads, light and power, water and communications are finished — which converts a relocation into a condition-based sequence.

There is a loose end the bill left and the act tied off. The seat of government was already named in the Bangsamoro Administrative Code — Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 9 of BAA 13 — and this bill relocates the capital without touching it, relying on its general repealing clause to resolve the conflict. BAA 37 amends that section by name. It is the difference between leaving two provisions to argue and deciding which one governs.

One more thing changed, in the title rather than the text. This bill establishes an "administrative capital"; the act establishes "the seat of government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region", and adds the Office of the Wali to the offices being housed. The difference between an administrative center and a seat of government is not decorative — one is where the paperwork is done, the other is where the region is.