Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman George Garcia said Thursday they have issued a resolution to include Sulu in the Zamboanga Peninsula region following the Supreme Court's decision to exclude it from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

“We issued already a resolution saying that Sulu should now be a part of Region IX and no longer a part of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao,” Garcia said before the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP).

Garcia said the first parliamentary elections of BARMM would proceed in May 2025.

“The Commission decided that it is our sworn duty to conduct the election no matter what. There is the law and there is our commitment under the peace process. We will proceed with the election process no matter what, until and unless the Commission on Election is restrained by a higher court,” he said.

Garcia said they cannot wait for BARMM to distribute the seven seats which were previously for Sulu to four other provinces in the region.

“What if the Bangsamoro will not pass an act of parliament that will distribute or reapportion the seven seats? Then we will be waiting for them. That cannot be the case,” Garcia said.

He explained that there will only be 73 out of the 80 members of the parliament which is composed of 32 members of the parliamentary districts, 40 members from political parties, and eight members from sectoral organizations.

He added that members from the sectoral organizations would not have elections next year, only assemblies to decide their eight representatives.

Garcia said they have not decided on the accreditation of the 16 political parties that wanted to participate in the 2025 BARMM elections since the Supreme Court ruled to exclude Sulu from the region.

With the Supreme Court’s decision, political parties would have a hard time complying with the requirement to have 10,000 members because some of them were from Sulu.

Garcia said that due to Sulu’s exclusion from BARMM, they have decided to move the filing of the certificate of candidacy in the region from October 1-8 to November 4-9 to give the parties more time to comply with the requirement. BARMM has 2.8 million registered voters, he said. Jaspearl Tan/DMS