BARMM holds its first parliament vote after four postponements and four deaths

Voters in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao cast ballots on 14 September for the first regular parliament since the region was created in 2019. The election had been postponed four times, from May 2022 to May 2025, October 2025 and March 2026. Some 2.393 million people were registered. Eighty seats were on the paper: 40 party-list seats, 32 district seats and eight sectoral seats. Parliament will later choose the chief minister who heads the executive.

Violence arrived before the first valid mark. Comelec Chair George Garcia said four people had died in election-related incidents since 13 September. A shooting in Cotabato City the night before the poll killed three and wounded 15. Gunfire, an explosion and reports of pre-shaded ballots came out of Basilan. Comelec placed Cotabato City and Maluso, Basilan, under its direct control, pulling local officials and police under the commission's command. Substitute ballots for 36 precincts in Maluso were flown from Manila to Zamboanga. Voting in Al-Barka, Basilan, was extended to 9 p.m. after a late opening. Most other clustered precincts, Garcia said, opened on time.

Partial unofficial returns overnight showed two parties well ahead of a third. With 5,089 of 5,212 expected election returns in by 4:10 a.m. on 15 September, the Bangsamoro Federalist Party had 451,598 party-system votes and the United Bangsamoro Justice Party, the vehicle of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, had 400,326. The BARMM Grand Coalition had 274,832. Those figures pointed toward roughly 16 party seats for BFP, 15 for UBJP and eight for the coalition, with leftover nominee seats for Raayat, Pro Bangsamoro, Al-Ittihad and any other list that cleared 2.5 percent. District races were still being added. One unofficial cut had UBJP ahead on combined seats and BFP on 30 including 13 district wins. Those numbers will move as the last 123 returns land.

The vote is the hinge of a peace process that replaced a long insurgency with an appointed interim government and promised an elected one. The interim Bangsamoro Transition Authority has run the region since 2019. Monday's parliament is the first body whose members can claim a direct mandate. Sectoral seats reserve places for women, youth, traditional leaders, the ulama, settlers and indigenous peoples. The IP seats were filled earlier by tribal assembly rather than on Monday's ballot.

Turnout targets told their own story. Garcia had spoken of 65 to 70 percent. Some officials hoped for 80. Soldiers and police stood at polling centres in Marawi, where voters queued beside armoured vehicles. The images are the peace process in a single frame: a ballot box and a rifle, in a city rebuilt after the 2017 siege.

What the parliament can do depends on who holds the 80 seats and on Manila. The Organic Law still leaves defence, foreign affairs and currency with the national government. Budget transfers, block grants and the pace of normalisation for former combatants are the real test. A house split between UBJP and BFP will have to bargain over the chief minister before it bargains with Malacanang. A lopsided house would let one party name the executive and dare the other to become an opposition inside a region that has not practised that role.

Four deaths, a city under Comelec control and a postponed ballot in Basilan are now part of the founding record. So is the fact that thousands of precincts opened, returns moved through the central server, and two parties that spent years as armed or transitional organisations are arguing about seat shares instead of territory. The argument is not finished until the last return is canvassed and parliament sits to pick a chief minister. That session, not Monday's queue, is when the first elected BARMM government begins.