The Commission on Elections, the police and the military have fused ranks this early to ensure safe and clean parliamentary elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in October this year.
Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia, in a dialogue with officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and the Army’s 6th Infantry Division on Wednesday, June 25, at Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte, said they are now busy preparing for the electoral exercise.
Representatives from the 1st Marine Brigade that has two units in Maguindanao del Norte and Cotabato City, the 5th and 6th Marine Battalions, were also present in the dialogue at Camp Siongco, where the headquarters of the 6th ID, a unit of the Western Mindanao Command, is located.
“We are ready for that democratic exercise,” Garcia said, referring to BARMM’s first ever parliamentary elections on October 13, 2025.
Garcia was accompanied to Camp Siongco by ranking Comelec officials, the Commissioners Maria Norina Casingal and Aimee Ferolino, Executive Director Teopisto Elnas, their regional director for BARMM, Ray Sumalipao and the provincial election officers in Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi.
While at Camp Siongco, Garcia and Ferolino talked lengthily about the need for the PRO-BAR, the 6th ID and all other military units in BARMM that are under the Western Mindanao Command to secure all Comelec personnel who are to administer the regional parliamentary elections in all towns and cities in the autonomous region.
Ferolino said the police and the military must protect all of them before, during and until the BARMM parliamentary elections are over.
“We want all of them safe during the first regional parliamentary elections,” she pointed out.
Ferolino ranted about what was for her lack of security support for their municipal election officer in Datu Odin Sinsuat, the lawyer Bai Maceda Abo, who was killed, along with her husband, in an an ambush in Barangay Makir in the municipality, not too distant from BARMM’s capital, Cotabato City, on March 26, exactly 48 days before the nationwide May 12 elections.
Local executives in Maguindanao del Norte, one of BARMM’s five provinces, and relatives of the slain poll official and her husband had told reporters that the attack that left them both dead was related to her work.
PRO-BAR’s newly-installed director, Police Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, 6th ID’s deputy division commander, Brig. Gen. Patricio Ruben Amata, Brig. Gen. Edgar Catu and Brig. Gen. Ricky Bunayog, commanders of the 601st and 602nd Infantry Brigades in Central Mindanao, respectively, had all assured to do their best to secure Comelec personnel for the whole duration of the BARMM election period.
Garcia said the 80-member Bangsamoro parliament also has to accelerate, via legislative measures, the reallocation of the seven parliamentary districts in the remaining BARMM provinces and cities that were originally in Sulu, which the Supreme Court had taken out from the core territory of the autonomous region last year as petitioned by its governor, Hadji Abdusakur Tan.
“That is an issue we are focusing attention on. The Bangsamoro parliament should do that quickly so that the election of parliament representatives for those districts can also be done during the October regional elections,” Garcia said. (JFU, June 25, 2025)ce