Public safety incident

Three people were killed and 15 others wounded as gunfire erupted hours before the polls opened on Monday in a semi-autonomous Muslim region of the Philippines set to choose its first elected parliament.
The vote is the culmination of an on-off peace process that began in the late 1990s and established the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in the country’s far south.
Cotabato police chief Jibin Bongcayao said the shooting took place just before midnight as members of rival political factions jostled for the right to cast their votes first.
“It started as a struggle for position in the queue between two groups,” Bongcayao said of the shooting outside a school being used as a polling station in the regional capital. “It led to shoving, escalated into a fist-fight, and eventually gunfire broke out in a crowded area.”
Bongcayao added that the men had belonged to rival parties that had emerged from the group that spent decades fighting for regional autonomy in the predominantly Catholic country, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
In a region long marred by political violence and blood feuds between powerful families, a peaceful election would be considered a successful one, party leaders recently said.
Security has been stepped up across Bangsamoro in recent days, with more than 20,000 security personnel fanning out in voting areas and quick-response teams assembled to address potential violence.
Last month, a motorcade carrying the region’s interim chief minister – an appointee of President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr – was ambushed and peppered with bullets.
In a separate incident, a man died in hospital in the early hours of Monday following an explosion near another polling station. Police are still investigating the cause.

Poll instead of weapons
Around 2.4 million people are eligible to vote to fill 80 parliamentary seats, including regional, district and sectoral representatives, which will be contested by over 600 candidates. Voting started at 7am and will end at 7pm, with the results to be known as soon as Monday evening.
The autonomous region is composed of five provinces and three cities, and its current parliamentarians were appointed by Marcos as transitional leaders. Some of them, including the chief minister, are among those vying for seats on Monday.
“Instead of picking up their weapons, they are now using the poll,” Marcos told foreign correspondents at a forum in August. “They are now involving themselves in the political process, which of course will bring peace and, hopefully, progress.”
The parliamentary election was originally set for 2022 but was pushed back by then president Rodrigo Duterte to 2025 to allow for more time for transition. Marcos then postponed it to September this year, with the winners’ terms to run from October until June 2031, and an election to follow every three years after.
A peaceful transfer of power would bolster confidence in Bangsamoro. The agriculture-driven economy grew 5 per cent to 267 billion pesos (US$4.25 billion) in 2025, outpacing the country’s 4.4 per cent uptick, government data show.
But the region continues to grapple with poverty and outdated infrastructure. More than a third of Bangsamoro’s cities and towns posted poverty rates exceeding 40 per cent, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. That is far above the national average.
Marcos expressed confidence in the region’s economic potential in his remarks last month.
“I joke with some of my friends from the area. I said, when I’m done being president, I’m moving to Mindanao simply because the opportunities are just incredible,” he said. “So, I’ll finally be a rich person. I’ll make a lot of money when I go back into business.”
Additional reporting by Bloomberg