With almost every vote counted in Bangsamoro's first parliamentary election, the party of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is in second place.
The Bangsamoro Federalist Party had 660,464 votes, or 35.2 percent, with 98.56 percent of votes counted. The United Bangsamoro Justice Party, which the MILF built as its political wing, had 609,078, or 32.4 percent. The BARMM Grand Coalition was third on 20.5 percent. Turnout passed 82 percent.
On Monday night this desk wrote that the vote would test whether the former rebels could win a mandate. The count shows that framing was too simple. The former rebels are on both sides of the result.
The party in front is also ex-MILF
The Federalist Party is led by Abdulraof Macacua, the region's chief minister and, before that, the MILF's top military commander. He won his own district seat.
His route to the job explains the split. In March 2025 the national government replaced Murad Ebrahim, the MILF chairman who had led the region since its creation, with Macacua. The movement did not absorb the change. By VERA Files' account it divided into competing parties: the UBJP as Murad's vehicle, the Federalist Party around Macacua and senior cadres who went with him, and a third party linked to the head of the peace implementation panel.
In early September, days before the vote, the MILF's Central Committee stripped Macacua and 40 other military commanders of their official functions.
Why the split matters more than the winner
A peace process built on autonomy has a simple theory: give a rebel movement a territory and a parliament, and it will have more to lose from war than from elections.
That theory works best when the movement stays whole, because then it has one leadership that can accept a result and hold its fighters to it. A movement that has divided into factions, with one of them in government by national appointment and another running the party the peace agreement expected to govern, has no single leadership to do that.
Analysts quoted by VERA Files warned before the vote that a poor UBJP showing could turn loyalists to Murad against the process, and even lead the MILF to withdraw from peace-process activities and refuse to disarm. Decommissioning of former fighters is already described as stuck.
The third-placed Grand Coalition adds a separate pressure. It brings together powerful political families who felt shut out during the MILF's years in charge. With about a fifth of the vote, it may hold the balance in a parliament where neither ex-MILF party has a majority of the 40 party-list seats on its own.
The count is not finished
These figures are unofficial. Comelec said winners of the party-list and sectoral seats were expected to be proclaimed, but proclamations were held up after voting was extended in some municipalities and canvassing boards waited for every precinct return. The commission says it will file charges over pre-shaded ballots found in Basilan.
The 32 district seats are counted separately, and the final shape of the 80-seat parliament depends on them as much as on the party vote.
What to watch
The proclamations, and then the first coalition talks. The question that matters most is not which ex-MILF party finishes first, but whether the two can sit in the same parliament. If they can, Bangsamoro will have turned a split in an armed movement into ordinary parliamentary opposition, which is a better outcome than the peace deal's designers planned for. If the losing faction rejects the result, the region's first election will have been the moment the transition's hardest problem arrived.
The vote counts and percentages with 98.56 percent counted, turnout above 82 percent, Comelec's statements on proclamation timing and on charges over pre-shaded ballots in Basilan, and Abdulraof Macacua's district win are as reported by the Philippine Daily Inquirer and The Manila Times on 15 September 2026. The account of the MILF's division into competing parties, Macacua's appointment in place of Murad Ebrahim in March 2025, the Central Committee's action against Macacua and 40 commanders, the families behind the Grand Coalition, the state of decommissioning and analysts' warnings are as reported by VERA Files. Figures are partial and unofficial until proclaimed by Comelec. The analysis is our own.
Topics worldphilippinesbangsamoroelectionspeace process
