It was supposed to be the moment decades of conflict in the southern Philippines finally gave way to something ordinary: an election. On September 14, 2026, voters in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) went to the polls for the first-ever regular parliamentary election in the region's history. By the end of the day, at least four people were dead, 19 were injured, two SUVs had been beaten apart with poles in the street, and election officials had seized direct control of two localities over ballot tampering.
It Started Over a Line
The worst violence began before polls even opened. Around 5 a.m., supporters of two rival political camps — identified as the UBJP and BFP factions — were jostling for position in the voting queue outside Datu Usman Mampen Elementary School in Barangay Bagua 2, Cotabato City. The jostling turned to shoving, the shoving turned into a fistfight, and then gunfire broke out in the crowded line. Three people were killed, including an 88-year-old resident. Fifteen others were wounded. Police later recovered shell casings from both .45-caliber and 9mm firearms at the scene.
A separate shooting inside Central Pilot Elementary School, another polling site in the city, left one more person dead and several injured. Combined with a Sunday-night explosion in Barangay Kapimpilan — where a man believed to have been carrying the device himself, identified as Zainudin Macabuat, was critically wounded when it detonated — the region's election commission tallied at least four dead and 19 injured across the day's incidents.
Two SUVs, Beaten Apart in the Street
On Sinsuat Avenue, just outside the Sero Elementary School polling site and less than a hundred meters from a city police precinct, men identified with one political party smashed apart two Toyota Fortuners belonging to rivals — swinging poles through windshields and windows in broad daylight as voters and pedestrians scattered. Cotabato City police say they're working with barangay officials to identify the men involved for prosecution.
"All of Them Had Been Pre-Shaded"
The fraud wasn't confined to Cotabato. On Basilan Island, election officials in the town of Maluso discovered overnight that ballots in 36 of the municipality's 68 precincts had already been marked before voting even began. Commission on Elections Chairman George Garcia didn't soften it: "We determined as of last night that the ballots in 36 of the 68 precincts had been compromised. We found that all of them had been pre-shaded." Several ballot boxes were found with broken seals, though the ballots inside remained intact. Comelec ordered the affected ballots reprinted and voting continued in the 32 untouched precincts.
Comelec Takes Over
By the end of the day, the Commission on Elections had placed both Cotabato City — all 37 of its barangays — and the town of Maluso under direct Comelec control, giving the commission authority over local officials, government employees, and law enforcement to try to protect what was left of the vote's integrity.
A Vote Decades in the Making
None of this was supposed to be the story. BARMM's first parliamentary election was meant to be a landmark moment — the region choosing its own legislature after generations of insurgency and a long transition under the 2014 peace agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The country's Presidential Peace Adviser condemned the violence but said it would not deter Bangsamoro voters from exercising their right to vote. In most of the region, it didn't. In Cotabato City and Maluso, it very nearly did.
