BARMM holds its first parliament election as UBJP and BFP split the early count

The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao voted on Monday for its first parliament since the region was established in 2018. Partial unofficial results through Monday night and early Tuesday put two parties born out of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in a tight lead.

The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, citing figures around 1 a.m. Tuesday, gave the Bangsamoro Federalist Party 643,907 votes, or 34.9 percent of the regional party ballot. The United Bangsamoro Justice Party had 599,053 votes, or 32.5 percent. The Bangsamoro Grand Coalition was third at 20.6 percent. The Raayat Democratic Party had 3.7 percent, enough to clear the 2.5 percent threshold that unlocks party-list seats. The Pro Bangsamoro Party sat at 2.0 percent and had not yet crossed that line.

GMA News, with 93.38 percent of returns processed at 10.14 p.m. Monday, had shown the same four-party order. Comelec's central operations centre had received 5,089 of 5,212 expected election returns by 4.10 a.m. Tuesday, according to The Manila Times.

How the chamber is built

The Bangsamoro parliament mixes district seats, reserved sector seats and a region-wide party vote. Each registered party files a ranked list of 40 nominees. Seats from the party ballot are filled in that order once a party clears 2.5 percent. Reserved seats cover youth, women, traditional leaders, ulama and non-Moro settlers. Indigenous peoples had already chosen two representatives in a separate assembly.

Early district results produced a family headline. Mansor Ebrahim, son of MILF chairman Ahod "Al Haj Murad" Ebrahim, won the 1st District of the Special Geographic Area for UBJP with 29,061 votes. He beat Butch Malang of the BFP, who took 17,386. Malang is a former SGA Development Authority administrator and had chaired the MILF Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities until the central committee, led by the elder Ebrahim, removed him a week before the vote.

The Manila Times, working from partial unofficial tabulations, projected UBJP toward 31 seats and BFP toward 30, including district wins. Those numbers will move as the last 123 returns arrive and as the official canvass replaces volunteer and media counts.

Why the first election is late

The 2018 Bangsamoro Organic Law promised an elected parliament after a transition. The interim body, staffed largely by MILF nominees, ran the region for eight years. Monday's vote is the first time residents chose that legislature directly. Al Jazeera had framed the contest as a turning point before polls opened. The early count shows the turning point is still inside the MILF family. UBJP is the Front's official vehicle. BFP is the breakaway that ran against it and still leads the party ballot on the unofficial sheet.

A shootout that killed three people marred voting in one restive area, officials said. The rest of the region voted under the security arrangements that have held since the peace process began. Turkey had been invited by the MILF as a witness. The invitation was political signalling, not a substitute for Comelec.

What a split parliament would mean

If the unofficial lead holds, neither UBJP nor BFP will own the chamber alone. Coalition arithmetic starts on Wednesday, when the remaining paper is counted. The Grand Coalition at 20 percent is large enough to matter in that math. The reserved sector seats, some of which early reports gave to UBJP, will decide who organises the first elected government of the region.

The result will not dissolve the MILF. It will test whether the Front's political party can live with a rival that came out of the same movement and then beat it on the party-list line. That is a different problem from the one the 2014 peace agreement was written to solve.