COTABATO CITY (September 19, 2026) — A veteran regional lawmaker and the son of the pioneer governor of the now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao were elected as members of the 80-seat regional parliament during the September 14 elections in the now seven-year Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

More than 10 regional political parties participated in the first ever September 14 parliamentary elections in the BARMM, whose territory encompasses five provinces, Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi, and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, the region’s capital.

Datu Bimbo Sinsuat and Maroup Candao were elected as nominees for bloc representation in the regional parliament of the BARMM Government Coalition and the Bangsamoro Federalist Party, respectively.

The BARMM Government Coalition has six elected bloc representatives to the parliament, one of whom is Sinsuat, who is from the big and politically influential Sinsuat clan in the adjoining Datu Odin Sinsuat and Datu Blah Sinsuat towns in Maguindanao del Norte and in Cotabato City.

Sinsuat was involved in various peacebuilding activities, some focused on fostering religious and cultural solidarity among Muslim, Christian and indigenous non-Moro communities, during his stint as an official of the LTP 12 and, subsequently, as member of the ARMM’s Regional Assembly.

The ARMM, created in 1990, was replaced with a more empowered BARMM in 2019, a product of a tedious peace process between the national government and the southern Moro communities.

The now duly-elected parliament member Candao is son of the lawyer Zacaria Candao, the first ever governor of ARMM, who was in the negotiating team of the Moro National Liberation Front that crafted, along with government counterparts, on December 23, 2026 in Tripoli, Libya the vaunted 1976 government-MNLF Tripoli Agreement.

The compact was to become the main reference in the crafting of all written compacts between the MNLF and the government, including the final truce both sides had forged on September 2, 1996, and, subsequently the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The younger Candao was first appointed as a member of the 80-seat parliament by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. in 2025. He is among the 16 candidates of the Bangsamoro Federalist Party elected for its bloc representation in the BARMM parliament during the September 14 regional electoral exercise.

Photo shows the newly elected Bangsamoro parliament members Sinsuat (right) and Candao, both scions of big clans in Maguindanao del Norte province. []