Bangsamoro holds its first parliament election; BFP and UBJP split the lead

Voters in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao cast ballots on 14 September for the first parliament the region has elected since it was created in 2018. Partial unofficial results overnight showed two parties well clear of the field in the region-wide party vote. GMA News, with 93.38 percent of election returns in at 10:14 p.m., had the Bangsamoro Federalist Party on 614,672 votes, or 34.8 percent, and the United Bangsamoro Justice Party on 571,703 votes, or 32.6 percent. The BARMM Grand Coalition had 20.7 percent. The Raayat Democratic Party-Bangsamoro People's Democratic Party had 3.7 percent, just over the 2.5 percent threshold that earns seats. Progresibong Bangsamoro sat at 2.0 percent and had not crossed the line.

Wikipedia’s running table later on Monday night, citing the same television tally updated, put BFP on 652,243 votes (34.94 percent) and UBJP on 605,887 (32.46 percent) from 1,866,661 party-list votes counted. The Manila Times, using Comelec’s central operations centre at 4:10 a.m. Tuesday with 5,089 of 5,212 returns in, described a prospective party-seat split of about 16 for BFP, 15 for UBJP and eight for the Grand Coalition, with smaller blocs picking up the rest. Those seat numbers will move as the last 123 returns arrive. They already show the shape of the first elected house: two large parties and a third bloc, not a single MILF list.

That split is the political fact of the night. UBJP is the party of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Mansor Ebrahim, son of MILF chairman Ahod “Al Haj Murad” Ebrahim, won the 1st District of the Special Geographic Area with 29,061 votes against 17,386 for Butch Malang of the BFP. Malang is a former SGA Development Authority head and was recently removed as chair of the MILF Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities by the central committee the elder Ebrahim leads. The son’s win keeps a family name in the new parliament. The party-list score shows the MILF did not monopolize the vote.

BFP is led by Abdulraof Macacua. Its list strength means the first regular parliament will have to bargain from day one. Regional parliamentary party seats are filled from closed lists of 40 names. District races and reserved seats for women, youth, traditional leaders, settlers and non-Moro indigenous peoples fill the rest of the chamber. Two non-Moro indigenous seats were already chosen on 26 August at a tribal convention in Cotabato City: Leticio Datuwata for the Lambiangan and Jo Genna Jover for the Teduray, to serve the 2026–2031 term under a rotation deal among tribes.

The 2018 organic law promised an elected parliament after a transition run by the MILF-dominated Bangsamoro Transition Authority. That transition stretched. Monday was the first time voters in Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and the Special Geographic Area carved from Cotabato towns chose the people who will pass the region’s laws and confirm its Cabinet. Turnout and precinct-level complaints will be audited by Comelec. Early reporting did not describe a collapse of the process. It described a competitive one.

What the new parliament can do is limited by Manila. Defence, foreign affairs, coinage and the large fiscal transfers still sit with the national government. What it can do is real inside those limits: a regional budget, a civil service, a policing arrangement with the national police, and the slow work of folding former combatants into civilian jobs. An elected house that is split between BFP and UBJP will make that work slower and more public than an appointed transition body did.

The next days are for canvassing, protests and the first talks about a speaker. If the party-list ratios hold, neither big party can ignore the Grand Coalition. If district results tilt one way, the speaker race will tilt with them. Eight years after the organic law, Bangsamoro now has a parliament with a mandate that can be counted. The count says the mandate is shared.