Senior officials of the Senate have rejected suggestion to postpone anew the scheduled elections of the Bangsamoro Parliament scheduled next year.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III and Senator Imee Marcos, chairperson of the Committee on Electoral Reforms, opposed the proposal which Senate President Francis Escudero planned to file as a bill.

House Speaker Martin Romualdez has led fellow congressmen in filing House Bill 11034 to cancel next years BARRM polls in response to the formal request of officials of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority.

If approved by Congress, this will be the second time elections in the Muslim autonomous region will be re-set. The first was in 2022.

Aside from Pimentel and Marcos, Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri has also turned down the proposal, warning of a backlash as a result of a second postponement.

“We promised then during the extension that we would do it only once so as not to subdue the people’s will that can only be determined through an electoral process,” said Zubiri, a principal author of the Bangsamoro Organic Law.

Pimentel did not expound on the reasons for his opposition to the proposal but stressed that the BARMM elections “must push through.”

Marcos, on the other hand, said BARMM constituents must now elect the leaders of their choice.

“I am really against it because the voices of the people need to be heard. Our Muslim brothers’ voices should be heard and we should allow them to vote for the candidates they truly desire,” Marcos stated.

According to her it is now time for the people to stand up against the threat of “chaos of bombings”.