Philippines' Muslim Autonomous Region Holds First Parliament Vote, Cotabato Shooting Kills Three

Voters in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao went to the polls Monday, September 14, 2026, to elect their first parliament since the region was carved out of the southern Philippines in 2019. The vote follows a 2014 peace deal that ended one of Southeast Asia's longest-running insurgencies.

Security incidents marred the election. Commission on Elections Chairperson George Garcia told reporters Monday that a shooting late Sunday outside a polling center in Cotabato City killed three people and wounded 15 others, according to Bloomberg and Al Jazeera. In separate Cotabato incidents, an improvised bomb injured the person carrying it, and a gun was fired with no one hurt, the Associated Press reported.

Garcia put Cotabato City under commission control and said an administrator would be designated. He also seized control of Maluso, a town in Basilan province, after election workers found pre-shaded ballots in 36 of the town's 68 precincts. Garcia ordered those ballots reprinted, delaying voting there. He told reporters Sunday that anyone caught sowing violence or buying votes would be charged.

Decades of war, a decade of waiting

The Bangsamoro region exists because the Moro Islamic Liberation Front agreed in 2014 to drop its demand for a separate Muslim state in exchange for broad autonomy, according to the South China Morning Post, which reported the deal was brokered by Malaysia. The MILF's 40,000 fighters pledged to demobilize.

That trade ended a conflict that killed roughly 150,000 combatants and civilians since the 1970s, by government estimates cited by the Associated Press. Organized armed resistance dates to the late 1960s, when the Moro National Liberation Front took up arms; the MILF broke off from that group and launched its own fight in the 1970s, according to Kyodo News. Mindanao was later a haven for al-Qaida and Islamic State-linked militants before a U.S.-backed Philippine military offensive weakened them, the AP reported.

This first parliamentary election was supposed to happen in 2022. It got pushed back three times, first by COVID-19 and then by a Supreme Court ruling that excluded one province from the autonomous region based on a 2019 plebiscite, Kyodo reported. In the meantime, an interim government called the Bangsamoro Transition Authority ran the region, with members appointed by Manila rather than elected.

How the vote works

Eighty seats are up for grabs: 40 regional party-list seats, 32 district seats, and eight reserved for sectoral representatives, according to the SCMP and Al Jazeera. Unlike the Philippines' presidential system, voters don't pick their chief executive directly. The parliament will choose a chief minister from among its own members by majority vote once it convenes, the SCMP reported.

The MILF is running as the United Bangsamoro Justice Party and wants to keep overseeing the peace deal's unfinished business, including decommissioning remaining fighters, Kyodo reported. Its main rival is the Bangsamoro Federalist Party, seen as aligned with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s party and its push for national federalization.

Election officials deployed security in force. The AP reported more than 20,000 soldiers and police patrolled roadsides with long arms; Bloomberg separately reported 10,000 police specifically stationed within BARMM. Officials targeted 80% turnout among the region's 2.4 million registered voters, out of a total regional population of 4.5 million, or about 4% of the national population, Kyodo reported.

Election integrity concerns

A fatal shooting outside a polling site, an improvised bomb, and pre-shaded ballots discovered in more than half of one town's precincts raised concerns about the election's security and ballot integrity. The commission's response is significant. Garcia's commission did not bury the problems. It publicly seized administrative control of both Cotabato City and Maluso, ordered ballots reprinted where fraud was found, and put the incidents on the record before polls even closed. Whether that response holds up depends on what comes next: how the reprinted Maluso ballots are counted, whether anyone is actually charged over the Cotabato shooting, and whether the new parliament can convene without further violence.

Polling stations were scheduled to close at 7 p.m. local time Monday. The parliament's first order of business, once seated, will be electing a chief minister from within its own ranks, a choice that will signal whether the MILF's political arm keeps steering the peace process it built.