Creating 8 new towns wins vote
COTABATO CITY — More than three-fourths of the 89,594 registered voters in 63 Bangsamoro barangays in Cotabato province in Region 12 voted in favor of proposals to create eight municipalities covering their domains during last Saturday’s plebiscite.
On Sunday, officials of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao told reporters here that 81.1 percent, or 72,658 of the 89,594 voters in the 63 barangays consented to the bills passed last year by the BARMM regional assembly, as enabling measures for the creation of the Pahamudin, Kadayangan, Nabalawag, Old Kaabacan, Kapalawan, Malidegao, Tugunan and Ligawasan municipalities.
“It was a successful, historic, peaceful plebiscite,” Mayla Luna Bayao, Cotabato provincial election officer, said.
Brig. Gen. Prexy D. Tanggawohn, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, and his counterpart in Region 12, Brig. Gen. Augustus P. Placer, separately confirmed on Sunday the statistics released by Comelec employees in Cotabato province and in BARMM.
Mr. Tanggawohn and Mr. Placer on Saturday toured in many of the 63 barangays, grouped together as BARMM’s Special Geographic Area, or SGA, to oversee the plebiscite security missions of units under them, mobilized to help the Comelec administer the exercise, the last requisite for the creation of the eight municipalities. — John Felix M. Unson
