Kulaman
is the central barangay of the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino, Province of Sultan
Kudarat. For the sake of those who are not so familiar with Philippine political
divisions, I will discuss them in this post and give some examples from around
these parts of Mindanao. My sources for this article are the 1991 Local Government Code of the Philippines and the official website of the National Statistical Coordination Board, among others.
The Philippines is currently divided
into seventeen regions. Government agencies (e.g., Department of Education,
Philippine National Police) in each area are headed by regional directors. The
regions, however, are not political units, since there are no regional
governments (except for the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, which is ruled by
an elected governor).
The regions are further divided into
provinces, each ruled by an elected governor. In American setting, regions are
loosely similar to states and provinces are similar to counties. Sultan Kudarat
Province is part of Region 12, or SOCCSKSARGEN, which also includes South
Cotabato Province, Cotabato City, Cotabato Province, Sarangani Province, and
General Santos City. As of June 30, 2012, the Philippines has eighty
provinces.
The provinces are divided into
municipalities, each headed by a mayor, and the municipalities are divided into
barangays, each headed by a chairman.
The country has 1,494 municipalities and 42,027 barangays. The Province of
Sultan Kudarat has eleven municipalities and one city (Tacurong), while the
Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino has twenty barangays.
Municipalities are also called
towns. Major newspapers in the country use town
instead of municipality (e.g.,
“Senator Ninoy Aquino town,” not “Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino). In
this blog, I interchangeably use municipality
and town, and barangay and village.
The barangay is
considered the basic unit of government in the Philippines. The village
chairman and councilors are the lowest-ranking public officials that are chosen
through periodic and organized elections. The barangay, however, is further
divided into puroks, or zones. Many barangays also have special zones called sitios. A sitio is usually a cluster of houses that is far from the center of
the village and often bigger than a purok. In English, I think sitio may be translated as hamlet.
Cities do not fit perfectly in the
normal political divisions of the Philippines, and their classifications may be
confusing to an ordinary person. Most, if not all, Philippine cities have been
created from existing municipalities. In contrast, provinces, municipalities,
and barangays are sometimes created out of areas that were not previously
grouped together. For example, the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino was
formed from several barangays of Kalamansig town and Barangay Langgal of
Bagumbayan town.
The Philippines has 140 cities, and they are classified as highly urbanized,
independent component, or component. Highly urbanized cities are those that
have an annual income of at least fifty million pesos. They usually have the
same level of importance as provinces; the mayor of a highly urbanized city is
independent of the governor of the province where the city belonged when it was
still a municipality. General Santos City is classified as such.
An independent component city is
similar in political status to a highly urbanized city. Only, the independent
component city does not meet the annual income requirement. Cotabato City is
one such city.
A component city is not much different
from a municipality; the mayor is still under the power of the governor, and
the registered voters in the city vote for the provincial elective officials.
Tacurong, Koronadal, and Kidapawan are component cities of Sultan Kudarat,
South Cotabato, and Kidapawan, respectively. Some government agencies, however,
have a separate division in each city, regardless of its size, so component
cities enjoy some independence from the provinces they belong.
Another complex political division
in the Philippines is the legislative district. Each district is entitled to
elect what is commonly called a congressman (more accurately, a member of the
House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, the Philippine
lawmaking body). Each province, or city with at least 250,000 inhabitants, is
entitled to have at least one representative in the Congress.
Though General Santos City and
Cotabato City meet the requirements, neither of them doesn’t have its own
representative yet. Instead, General Santos City is combined with three
municipalities to form the second legislative district of South Cotabato, and
Cotabato City, along with eleven municipalities, belongs to the first district
of Maguindanao Province. Sultan Kudarat Province has two districts, and Kulaman
is included in the second.
One textbook erroneously describes
the Kulaman plateau as part of Bukidnon Province, while a few academic papers
fail to mention that Kulaman is, at the present, part of the Municipality of
Senator Ninoy Aquino. I hope this post will help set the records straight.
