BARMM polls postponement should undergo plebiscite – lawyer

MANILA, Philippines — Any law seeking to postpone the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao’s (BARMM) parliamentary polls needs to undergo a plebiscite in “political units directly affected,” according to an election lawyer.

In a statement on Sunday, lawyer Romulo Macalintal pointed out that any law postponing the BARMM polls in 2025 will be an amendment to the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) or the Republic Act (RA) No. 11054, which was ratified by BARMM voters in January 2019.

READ: Bill seeking to postpone BARMM parliamentary polls filed at Senate

“Clearly, to postpone again the said election will be an amendment of BOL which specifically scheduled the first regular election for the Bangsamoro Government to be synchronized with the 2022 national elections,” Macalintal said.

“In the 2004 case of Disomangcop vs Secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways, the Supreme Court (SC) ruled that organic acts (like the BOL) are more than ordinary statutes because they enjoy affirmation by a plebiscite. Hence, the provision thereof cannot be amended by an ordinary statute (in that) the amendatory law has to be submitted to a plebiscite,” he added.

However, given the time until the 2025 polls, Macalintal said the Commission on Elections (Comelec) no longer has “the luxury to conduct this plebiscite.”

“The fact that the BARMM election scheduled in the 2022 national elections was postponed by Republic Act No. 11593 amending the BOL and resetting said election to May 2025 without undergoing a plebiscite, will not justify a repetition of the said unconstitutional procedure,” the lawyer pointed out.

“RA 11593 is already an operative fact – an unalterable event. Thus, even a challenge to its validity for lack of ratification in a plebiscite may only lead to the conclusion that the BARMM polls must be held in the immediately ensuing 2025 national elections similar to the SC’s 2023 ruling in Macalintal vs Comelec involving the postponement of the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections,” he added.

This means that the postponement of the polls should be “supported by sufficient government interest and genuine reasons grounded only on objective and reasonable criteria,” according to Macalintal.

“In other words, an election could no longer be postponed based on the fleeting dictates of politics,” he added.

He also noted that postponing the BARMM polls violates the requirement of the BOL that the BARMM elections should be aligned with the national polls.

“It will likewise violate the clear intent of the 1987 Constitution that national and local elections shall be synchronized as echoed in  R. A. 7166 which clearly provides that: It is the policy of the State to synchronize elections so that there shall be simultaneous regular elections for national and local officials once every three years,” he added.

Last month, a bill seeking to defer the BARMM parliamentary polls from 2025 to 2026 was filed at the Senate.

Senate President Francis Escudero filed Senate Bill 2862, proposing to move the polls to May 11, 2026 to allow the region to reconfigure its jurisdictions as well as reallocate the seats of its 80-member parliament following the High Court’s ruling cutting off Sulu from the BARMM.