Villages Named Kulaman

In 1965, a municipality named Kulaman was created, and like most municipalities at the time, it was named after the most prominent barrio in the area. The municipality lasted less than a year due to a legal issue about its creation, and it was not recreated until twenty-four years later, in 1989, and this time, the name of a heroic Manobo chieftain was dropped for the name of a heroic Philippine senator. The municipality was named Senator Ninoy Aquino, and the village of Kulaman was made the seat of government.

Even if the name Kulaman officially applies only to the poblacion or central village, it is used by many people to refer to the whole municipality. People rarely use the terms Ninoy and Ninoy Aquino, much less the lengthy Senator Ninoy Aquino. If you’re in the capital town, for example, and you’re on your way to Senator Ninoy Aquino, you should tell the driver of the tricycle to take you to the “terminal to Kulaman.” If you say “terminal to Senator Ninoy Aquino,” he might not know where to take you. In some cases, Kulaman is still used in official documents. For example, the Sultan Kudarat Division of the Department of Education divides the districts of Senator Ninoy Aquino into Kulaman I and Kulaman II.

I always try to make a distinction between the traditional and the official. When I’m in my own province, I tell people I’m from Kulaman. When I’m in other places, I tell people I’m from the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino. In my write-ups, I use Senator Ninoy Aquino town, Kulaman Plateau, or Kulaman village; I’ve never used Kulaman town, as far as I can remember.

I used to think that Kulaman village—or Barangay Kulaman or Barrio Kulaman—could only be appropriately used for the central village of my town, that settlement near the body of water that is also known today as Kulaman River. To my surprise and delight, I found out from old laws that there had been villages in the past that were officially named Kulaman, that Kulaman officially (not just traditionally) had a much wider area.

In 1959, when Palimbang was created by virtue of Executive Order No. 350, the municipality was to be composed of more than forty barrios, two of which were North Kulaman and South Kulaman. It’s not clear from the law if the two barrios used to be part of the municipality of Kiamba or of the municipality of Lebak. I’m fairly certain that it’s Lebak.

Map of Senator Ninoy Aquino. Poblacion and Kulaman refer to the same place.

The official yet inaccurate map of Palimbang. Barangay Baluan
should be close to the boundary, at the meeting point of the two creeks
from Senator Ninoy Aquino.

In 1961, when Kalamansig was created by virtue of Executive Order No. 459, the municipality was to be composed of twenty-eight barrios and sitios—twenty from the municipality of Lebak and eight from the municipality of Palimbang. One of the barrios and sitios from Palimbang was North Kulaman. This means that South Kulaman was left in the territory of Palimbang. At present, though, Palimbang doesn’t have any barangay named South Kulaman. I don’t know yet what exactly happened to the village or its name, for I don’t have copies of Sangguniang Panlalawigan (provincial board) resolutions creating the barrios and barangays of Sultan Kudarat.

North Kulaman must have later been referred to as Kulaman only. In November 1965, when the municipality of Kulaman was created by virtue of Executive Order No. 211-E, its assigned seat of government was the barrio of Kulaman, which was taken from the municipality of Kalamansig. There was no mention of any barrio from Kalamansig named North Kulaman. At present also, Kalamansig does not have any barangay named Kulaman. (But Kalamansig got its name from Kulaman suwayeg, which means “Kulaman in the river.”)

So North Kulaman became the Kulaman that we know today, and South Kulaman disappeared from the map. Or more accurately, the name South Kulaman disappeared from official records of the municipality of Palimbang. But where was the barrio of South Kulaman possibly located? Take a look at the maps of Senator Ninoy Aquino and Palimbang. If the locations of North Kulaman and South Kulaman had been based on the flow of Kulaman River, South Kulaman must have been around the area where the sitio of Datu Sipot is located today. If South Kulaman had been straight south of North Kulaman, it must have been on the west of Barangay Baluan. Take note that the official map of Palimbang is not accurate. Barangay Baluan should be close to the boundary; it’s just a short ride from Barangay Tacupis in Senator Ninoy Aquino.

Confused yet? You’ve got company. In October 1965, when Bagumbayan was created by virtue of Executive Order No. 187, Kulaman was listed as one of the barrios and sitios that were to compose the new municipality. Bagumbayan was being formed from within the municipality of Isulan, so Kulaman could not be included in the list, for Kulaman at the time was part of the municipality of Kalamansig. In any case, the law was declared null (as what happened to the law that created the municipality of Kulaman), and when the municipality of Bagumbayan was recreated in 1969, the barrio of Kulaman was not included.

To recap, the village of Kulaman (two villages, in fact) was officially in existence as early as 1959, and in 1965, it was already large enough to be made the seat of government of a municipality. The laws are strong proof that the name Kulaman has been attached to the land, much earlier and more strongly than the name Senator Ninoy Aquino. What am I trying to say? Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino should be renamed Municipality of Kulaman.

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.)

The Sulok Festival of Senator Ninoy Aquino

(Note: The text below is taken from “2010 Socio-Economic Profile of Sultan Kudarat Province,” compiled by the Provincial Planning Development Office. I edited the text for clarity purposes, but I’m not vouching for the accuracy of the content.)

Senator Ninoy Aquino is located at the mountainous part of Sultan Kudarat Province, where the Dulangan Manobo tribe is the original settlers of the area. Years after, the rich and vast resources of the area prompted the influx of many Christian settlers in Kulaman. Together they enjoy the vastness and the rich natural resources of the place.

Sulok is the Manobo Dulangan term for basket. Long ago, the forefathers of the Dulangan Manobos made suloks from tree barks. Now, Manobo women have learned to weave and use dapdap (a kind of bamboo) and nito (rattan). The Dulangan Manobos, especially the women, often store their adornments and other belongings in a sulok and sling it on their heads or shoulders when they’re traveling. The Manobo also use a small sulok called sinagfeng. Chewing ingredients such as betel nuts, tobacco, ash, and buyo are kept in the sinagfeng.

During planting season, Dulangan Manobos perform rituals to ask for a plenteous harvest later on. Part of the ritual is using suloks as containers of the seeds that they are going to sow. After the harvest, the Manobos also store their produce in suloks. (I’m not sure if I have rewritten this part accurately. The original is quite confusing. —Blogger)

Manobos are nomadic by nature, and suloks are used as containers in transferring their belongings from one place to another. Through Resolution No. 02-08 series of 2002, it was declared that “Sulok Festival” be the official name of the foundation anniversary celebration of Senator Ninoy Aquino.

The sulok symbolizes the struggles and efforts of the Dulangan Manobos. It also symbolizes the unity of the constituents, together with the local government, who are now reaping the fruits of their labor and sacrifices. Sulok Festival was declared as the official name of Senator Ninoy Aquino foundation anniversary celebration to inculcate the paramount role of oneness and belongingness among the populace. (This is a shorter version of the original, which, in its pompousness and verbosity, is simply discombobulating. —Blogger)

Through this festival, Senator Ninoy Aquino has started to boost its name and the natural wonders and resources that can be found in the municipality. This great success is accredited to the Manobo Dulangan tribe.

A Questionable History

Below is the official brief history of the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino. I took it from the “2010 Socio-Economic Profile of Sultan Kudarat Province,” compiled by the Provincial Planning Development Office. The history was probably provided by my town.

I hate to help spread inaccurate information, so please be reminded to take the text below with a grain of salt. I’m reprinting it here as is. The point of view is poblacion-centric. The origin of the municipality is traced from the capital village when, in fact, Kulaman was just one of the villages that constituted Senator Ninoy Aquino when the municipality was created. My own village, Langgal, for example, has never been part of any territory named Kulaman. For my part, while I often say that “Kulaman Plateau” is my “hometown,” I’ve never said—or meant to say—that Kulaman is a municipality.

Another thing that I take issue is the part about the burial practices for Manobo sultans. The persons who wrote the “history” apparently let their imagination run away with them. If the Manobos indeed waited for seven years—from the death of the sultan to the time when his bones could be transferred to a burial jar—to “crown” a new sultan, who ruled them in those seven years? I also have doubts if the Manobos really had sultans the way the Maguindanaons had, but this is another discussion. Maybe I should write a more accurate brief history and give a copy to the municipal hall.

Before the advent of Christian settlers, Senator Ninoy Aquino (formerly Kulaman) was one of the mountainous areas that belonged to the territorial control of the municipality of Kalamansig. The place was inhabited by an ethnic group known as Manobo.

The name Kulaman is derived from the famous Sultan of the Valley during the seventeenth century. According to a legend, there was a time when famine came to the place and the Sultan who was a loving father to his family gathered “kayos”, a native food that substitutes cereals, for their consumption. The Sultan washed the kayos in the center of the river called Matiao. While he washed the kayos a swift current suddenly rushed and the Sultan was carried away by the current and was drowned. His body was later recovered two kilometers downriver from the place where he washed the kayos.

The natives then preserved the Sultans’ for seven years and transferred him to a burial to the burial jar [sic] and kept in a cave for the next century. After the Sultan was buried in the burial jar, a new Sultan was crowned to rule the place. This was their culture during that time.

The river Matiao from that time was renamed Kulaman, in memory of the drowned Sultan. From the death of Sultan Kulaman, the following were his successors: Sultan Jani, Sultan Ugis, Sultan Tilok, Sultan Kalolong and Sultan Dakias.

Sultan Tagenek Dakias was the first ethnic tribe (Manobo) elected as a Sangguniang Bayan member when Municipality of Kulaman was created.

On September 12, 1972, Kulaman became a barangay of the Municipality of Kalamansig and a mother barangay of Buenaflores, Bugso, Kadi, Malegdeg, Kiadsam and Sewod.

It was under Republic Act 6712 that Kulaman was created as a municipality on July 11, 1989 and was renamed Senator Ninoy Aquino, separating it from its mother municipality of Kalamansig. Two thirds of the area of the new barangay [sic] came from Kalamansig while one thirds is from Bagumbayan.

The first appointed and elected Mayor was Gelacio Defuntorum. At present the municipality has 20 existing barangays. The Poblacion retained the name Kulaman, while the municipality was named Senator Ninoy Aquino in honor of Senator Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. who at that time became the modern hero of Filipinos when he became an instrument for the downfall of a dictatorial government.

The Manobo of Mongkil and Kulaman

(Blogger’s note: The following is an excerpt from the book Defending the Land: Lumad and Moro People’s Struggle for Ancestral Domain in Mindanao, specifically pp. 107–8. The publishers welcome and even encourage the reproduction of the book in part or in its entirety, so I am posting this excerpt here without prior permission. To cite the book, please see Webliography.) 

According to Datu Ismael Sakudal, Datu Talihop Kaf’d and Bise Palawan of Sitio Mongkil, Barangay Basag in Kulaman, the Manobos had always lived in the area as far back as anyone can remember. The area was one huge forest teeming with wild animals. The Visayans arrived sometime in 1960, starting with some 30 Ilonggo families scattering themselves in the vast expanse. More settlers moved in later, with the Ilocanos and Cebuanos joining the migration in the later part of the 70’s, bringing the number of non-Lumads to 200 families. The Christians bought, leased and squatted on some lands tilled by the Manobos. They were able to acquire titles to lands once belonging to the Lumads. Eventually the Lumads realized what was happening to their property but could not do anything, ignorant as they were of the legal processes of land possession.

Lambak became a barangay sometime in 1991. The barangay officials are largely settlers. In time, much of the Manobo culture started to vanish, as they hardly had time to get together to maintain their cultural practices. Antang-antang is now almost a thing of the past. They bury their dead almost immediately, with little more than a sheer box to contain the dead, as there are no more trees to fell for the trunk-coffin. With Christian dominance firmly established in the place, the Manobos are pessimistic that they can still retrieve what they had lost over the years.

Barangay Kulaman, more popularly known as the Manobo Village, is at the edge of the municipality. It is home for the Manobos from different sitios and barangays when they get into town. There are a hundred families in the village, but each of them have [sic] a farm in one of the outlying sitios or barangays. The idea of having a village for the Manobos in the municipality was a brainchild of the late Sultan Tagenek Dakias, and approved by the office of the former PANAMIN. It became a reality sometime in 1978. The village consisted of 178 lots, each with an area of 600 square meters. At the village, government officials, provincial or municipal, meet with the datus and Sultan to discuss various concerns. It also became the residence of the present “sultan” of the Manobos, “Sultan” Rey Dakias. The apostrophe [sic] indicates that the community of datus have not confirmed him yet officially as Sultan. The village also served as a haven of the Manobos, especially those who bring their sick to the municipal clinic. Those taking a break from their hectic farm work or who wish to while away their time between planting and harvesting of their crops also stay at the village.

Villages Named After Manobo People

According to Defending the Land, a study on ancestral domain claims, place-names in Kulaman were often derived from the names of Manobo people. Below are some of them. Note that a barangay is a village and a sitio is a slightly remote and well-populated district within a barangay.

• Barangy Lagubang was named after the oldest resident of the area.
• Barangay Kapatagan was named after the wife of Lagubang.
• Barangay Nati got its name from the first known leader of the community. Nati died in a flood that occurred before the Spanish colonized the Philippines in the 1500s.
• Sitio Bagsing of Barangay Gapok got its name from the first datu of the place.
• Sitio Todog of Barangay Bugso was named after a hunter from Barangay Malegdeg who slept under a large tree and never woke up.
• Barangay Sewod took its name from a well-known and respected datu.
• Barangay Langgal was named after the third wife of Datu Sewod.
• Barangay Kadi was named after the fourth wife of Datu Sewod.
• Barangay Kulaman, of course, was named after a famous seventeenth-century sultan.

Kulaman (official name: Senator Ninoy Aquino) is composed of twenty barangays, all of which have Manobo names. This is one proof of the claim of the Dulangan Manobo that Kulaman Plateau is their ancestral domain.

What I find interesting in the list are the ones named after women. Traditionally, Manobo women were owned by their husbands, so to speak. The dowry system forced them to live almost like slaves once married. I wonder how Kapatagan, Langgal, and Kadi were able to have such a status as to have a territory named after them. They might have been great beauties, or they might have been good leaders, the first empowered Manobo women.

Kulaman River

This is Kulaman River. If you are traveling from the lowland towns of Sultan Kudarat, this body of water is the indication that you are entering the village of Kulaman, the seat of government of the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino. The river is the major vein that runs through the heart of Kulaman Plateau.

Kulaman River as seen from the bridge in the national highway. The photo at the top shows the water flowing toward the bridge, and the photo below shows the water flowing downstream, away from the bridge. Courtesy of M. Linan.

Local legend has it that the river is where Sultan Kulaman drowned in the seventeenth century. In the next paragraph is the story according to a paper by University of the Philippines professor Rosario Cruz-Lucero. It is written in Tagalog, and I translated it to English.

A long time ago, the old name of Kulaman River was Matihaw.  A long period of drought occurred. Matihaw River dried up. Kulaman dug up the mud in search of food, and he caught a fish. He informed his tribesmen of his find, and they happily went to the location of the fish. They slept there that night. A heavy rain suddenly came. Matihaw River flooded, and Kulaman drowned. That’s why the river is named after Kulaman.

It’s only the river and the village that are named after Kulaman. A whole town, too. Kalamansig (the town where Barangay Kulaman used to be a part of before becoming the capital village of Senator Ninoy Aquino in 1989 got its name from the phrase Kulaman suwayeg, which means “Kulaman in the river.”

A spot in Kulaman River. Motorcycles often pass through this shortcut, for the bridge is a couple of kilometers away from the center of the town. For five pesos, a “ferry,” made of bamboo poles tied together, can carry you and you vehicle across the river. A Manobo man propels the ferry forward by pulling on a rope tied to both banks of the river. The kid in the center is taking a bath and soaping his hair. Photo by M. Linan.

Plateau or Valley?

Say “Kulaman Plateau” anywhere in Sultan Kudarat Province and you’ll be met with a slightly confused look. Virtually no one here calls Kulaman a plateau. For the people living in the plains, Kulaman is a mountain. For the residents of Kulaman’s neighboring villages, Kulaman is a valley.

I myself never thought of Kulaman as a plateau until I read the academic papers on the limestone burial jars. I come from a village that is outside of, and more elevated than, Barangay Kulaman, and I grew up hearing people refer to our poblacion as a valley. However, if one looks at the place from a farther point or with a broader perspective, such as the anthropologists from outside Mindanao did, it indeed makes more sense to describe Kulaman as a plateau than as a mountain or a valley.

So do use Kulaman Plateau when writing about the burial urns or the Manobo people, but if you are visiting Sultan Kudarat and asking for directions, use Kulaman only. Mention plateau and people won’t have a clue what you are talking about.

Kulaman in Relation to Philippine Political Divisions

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.