Senate President Francis Escudero said a bill seeking to postpone the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) elections this May should be approved before they adjourn on Feb. 8.

In a press briefing, Escudero said President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. had certified the three-month postponement of the BARMM election as urgent.

“The period of interpellation was closed yesterday and we expect that it will be approved on second reading today so that we can approve it on third reading without using the certification. But if we really need to, we will use the certification,” Escudero said.

“We need to decide on this one way or the other if we will postpone the BARMM elections or not before we adjourn. Because when we adjourn, there won’t be enough time to reset it, if that is what the majority decides. We will resume our session on May 20. By then, the elections have already finished,” he added.

Escudero said there was a proposed amendment seeking to postpone BARMM polls by five months to give time to realign security and for the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) to fill the parliamentary seats left vacant due to the Supreme Court’s ruling to exclude Sulu from BARMM.

“For now, I think there is an amendment proposing a five-month postponement. It’s not one year, three months, or one month. The main reason, according to our security officials, is to avoid spreading our security forces too thin if the elections coincide with the regular elections. They prefer to have a focused approach, and this is the time they say is necessary to refocus security forces in the BARMM area,” Escudero said.

“Secondly, the postponement would provide the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) enough time, if they decide to, to reallocate the seven seats for Sulu that were lost due to the Supreme Court decision,” he said.

“If they decide to reallocate, there’s a process the BTA needs to follow, including publication, adjustments to ballots, and a period for filing with the Comelec since there was no filing for those seven seats in Sulu,” he said. Jaspearl Tan/DMS