The Mother of Kulaman I

(This is the first of a three-part series.)

What is the mother municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino? The easiest answer perhaps is Kalamansig and Bagumbayan, for in 1989 the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino was created out of seven barangays of the Municipality of Kalamansig and one barangay of the Municipality of Bagumbayan. But what about before that, say, in 1950? To what municipality did the eight barangays belong? Kalamansig and Bagumbayan were themselves created from other municipalities.

So I dug up my hometown’s past. I thought it would be easy, that I would be able to finish doing research and writing blog posts in several hours. I winded up spending days on the topic, checking various files I had saved in my drives, scouring the web for decades-old laws, and writing and revising and revising again my write-ups. Largely to blame for the repetitive process I went through are the sources. The available materials on the history of Sultan Kudarat Province, online or otherwise, are packed with errors or lack important details. My most reliable sources are executive orders, republic acts, and other laws, and even they are not exactly handy. They have typographical errors and clunkily structured in some parts, and I have to piece them together and arrange in chronological order. I also didn’t know at first how to present them in this blog.

Here it is, anyway—where Senator Ninoy Aquino came from. I realized that for the town’s history to make sense, I had to connect it with the bigger picture, the bigger territory. I had to go back all the way to how the Americans administered Mindanao (along with the rest of the Philippine archipelago). Let’s start with a brief timeline:

1903—Cotabato District established under Moro Province
1914—Cotabato District turned to Cotabato Province under Department of Mindanao and Sulu
1916—Municipalities of Cotabato and Parang established in Cotabato Province
1917—Municipalities of Cotabato, Dulawan, and Midsayap and 37 municipal districts established
            in Cotabato Province
1936—Municipalities of Dulawan and Midsayap created from municipal districts
1947—Kiamba, Dinaig, Koronadal, and seven other municipalities created from municipal districts
1948—Lebak created from parts of Kiamba and parts of Dinaig
1953—Norala created from parts of Koronadal
1954—Dulawan renamed Datu Piang
1957—Isulan created from parts of Datu Piang and parts of Norala
1959—Palimbang created from parts of Kiamba and parts of Lebak
1961—Kalamansig created from parts of Lebak and parts of Palimbang
1965—Bagumbayan created from parts of Isulan
1965—Kulaman created from parts of Kalamansig, Palimbang, and Isulan
1966—South Cotabato Province created from parts of Cotabato Province
1969—Bagumbayan recreated from parts of Isulan
1973—Cotabato Province divided into three: North Cotabato, Maguindanao, and Sultan Kudarat
1989—Senator Ninoy Aquino created from parts of Kalamansig and parts of Bagumbayan

Despite spending days on the research, I was still not able to iron out two major issues. First is that I don’t know why Dulawan and Midsayap were created as municipalities in 1936 by virtue of Executive Order No. 66. The two places were already municipalities before that. Act No. 2711 of the Philippine Commission, dated March 10, 1917, names them, along with Cotabato, as the three municipalities of the Province of Cotabato. Perhaps sometime between 1917 and 1936, the two municipalities were dissolved and the municipal districts that composed them were governed directly by the provincial government. It seems that the municipal districts that composed them in 1917 were the same municipal districts that were chosen to compose them in 1936.

The second issue that boggles me concerns the municipalities of Kalamansig, Bagumbayan, and Kulaman. They were created in December 1961, October 1965, and November 1965, respectively. The executive orders that created Bagumbayan and Kulaman were later made void by a Supreme Court ruling, and the two municipalities had to be recreated in 1969 and 1989, respectively, with Kulaman renamed Senator Ninoy Aquino.

I can’t find any court ruling that dealt directly with Bagumbayan and Kulaman. (But not for lack of trying.) What I found instead was a ruling that involved thirty-three municipalities created in 1964 by virtue of executive orders. The ruling was issued on December 1965, less than a hundred days after the municipalities of Bagumbayan and Kulaman were created. The Supreme Court ruled that the president could no longer create a municipality through an executive order because the law that had given the president the authority to do so (Section 68 of the Administrative Code) had been impliedly repealed by the Barrio Charter Act. The Administrative Code (Republic Act 2711) was dated March 10, 1917, while the Barrio Charter Act (Republic Act No. 2370) took effect on January 1, 1960.

The ruling states, “The Executive Orders in question are hereby declared null and void ab initio and the respondent [the auditor general] permanently restrained from passing in audit any expenditure of public funds in implementation of said Executive Orders or any disbursement by the municipalities above referred to.” I don’t what the heck “passing in audit” means, but I’m sure that the thirty-three newly created municipalities was going to have serious problems with money. This must be the reason why Bagumbayan and Kulaman petered out as municipalities even if the executive orders that created them were not brought to court and declared null and void.

I wonder, though, why Kalamansig was not affected by the ruling. I rummaged through the web for any republic act that recreated the municipality, but my search yielded no result. And all the sources that I found about the history of Kalamansig point to Executive Order No. 459, dated December 29, 1961, as the basis for creation of the municipality. Again, the Barrio Charter Act, which removed the power of the president to create municipalities, took effect on January 1, 1960, two long years before Pres. Carlos P. Garcia made Kalamansig a municipality. Like what happened to the municipality of Kulaman and the original municipality of Bagumbayan, the municipality of Kalamansig should have also stopped existing. Does this mean that Kalamansig is a de facto municipality? If someone questions in court the legal personality or whatever of Kalamansig, the barangays there might suddenly find themselves without a mother.

(Come back next Monday for the second part, where I will discuss in greater detail the laws that created Cotabato and her children.)