BARMM parliament urged to prioritize El Niño impact mitigation

COTABATO CITY — Two officials of a political party with eight representatives in the now duly  constituted 80-member Bangsamoro parliament on Tuesday, November 3, urged regional lawmakers to focus on mitigating the effects of El Niño on communities across the autonomous region.

Most residents of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which has three component cities, rely mainly on cultivating short-term crops for their livelihood. This source of income could be threatened by the prolonged dry spell that the El Niño weather phenomenon is expected to bring.

Basilan Gov. Mujiv Hataman and Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr., separately expressed confidence on Tuesday that BARMM Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua and members of the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament would promptly introduce measures to cushion the impact of the El Niño on BARMM’s agriculture sector.

The effects of the El Niño, caused by the warming of ocean surface temperatures, is affecting tropical areas in the Pacific region.

Last week, radio stations in BARMM reported that the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration of the Department of Science and Technology had announced that the El Niño would possibly be felt more intensely in the country this month, lasting until the middle of 2027.

Hataman and Adiong are among the five governors in BARMM who, together, endorsed Macacua as their favored bet for chief minister of the regular parliament, a post he held from 2025 until the September 14 regional elections on interim basis, as an appointee of President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr.

Macacua was nominated as BARMM chief minister during the inaugural session on Friday last week of regional lawmakers elected during the September 14 parliamentary polls.

“We are happy that we now have a regular parliament, composed of duly elected members. We know our now duly-nominated regional chief minister will listen to our request for him and all other members of the parliament to plan out measures to mitigate the impact of the El-Niño to residents of the autonomous region,” Hataman said.

Hataman, president the Bangsamoro People’s Party, and Adiong a senior official of the Serbisyong Inklusibo, Alyansang Progresibo Party, are also both figureheads of the BARMM Government Coalition Party, which has a bloc of eight representatives to the regional parliament, elected during the September 14 electoral exercise in the autonomous region.

“We also wish for all members of the now regular parliament belonging to different parties to unite now and together work for the promotion of peace and development in BARMM. In doing so, they can work as a big team in mitigating the effects of the El Niño to the communities in the autonomous region,” Adiong said.

The territory of BARMM encompasses the provinces of Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, where its 32-hectare regional capitol is located.

Officials of the influential Bangsamoro Business Council (BBC), including its chairman, lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Torres, separately told reporters that they were ready to help, if tapped, in planning initiatives to ease the effects of the El Niño on communities across the autonomous region.

BBC officials from its chapters in BARMM's five provinces and three cities, most of whom are engaged in agricultural enterprises, said local executives should assist the Bangsamoro parliament in planning measures to address the potentially serious effects of the El Niño on farmers and livestock raisers in the region.

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