Military, police all set for Sulu, Tawi-Tawi 2025 midterm polls

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The military’s Western Mindanao Command and the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (PRO-BAR) are all set for the May 2025 elections in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.

Army Lt. Gen. Antonio Nafarrete, commander of the Western Mindanao, which has jurisdiction over the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and Region 9, told reporters on Saturday, April 26, that all military units in Sulu and in Tawi-Tawi had laid common security plans in support of the efforts of the Commission on Elections to ensure peaceful elections in both provinces in May 2025.

Nafarrete said officials of the Army’s 11th Infantry Division in Sulu and the Navy’s 2nd Marine Brigade in Tawi-Tawi, and the PRO-BAR are together enforcing election security measures in both areas.

Nafarrete and Police Brig. Gen. Romeo Juan Macapaz, director of PRO-BAR, had separately said that they are optimistic of peaceful elections in Sulu, partly owing to the settlement in recent years of more than 30 bloody clan wars in its 19 towns by local executives and officials of police and military units in the province.

Nafarrete said Sulu had been liberated, via multi-sector pacification initiatives, from the presence of Abu Sayyaf terrorists who had sided with some candidates during past local elections.

“Still, we are not taking chances. Our units in Sulu and in Tawi-Tawi are implementing tight election security measures as part of our general election security contingency for Sulu,” Nafarrete said.

Radio reports on Saturday in Central Mindanao on stated that Nafarrete, officials of the 2nd Marine Brigade, the Naval Forces Western Mindanao and representatives from the Philippine Air Force held last Thursday, April 24, a security conference at Barangay Sanga-Sanga in Bongao, the capital town of Tawi-Tawi, where they discussed the intricacies of their election security plans for the province.

"We are also quite sure of peaceful elections in Tawi-Tawi," Nafarrete said.

Nafarrete and officials of the 11th ID and its component-brigades also met last Wednesday, April 23, at the headquarters of the 1102nd Infantry Brigade at Barangay Bual in Luuk, Sulu, where they agreed to work closely with all local government units and the PRO-BAR in maintaining law and order during the May 25 electoral exercise throughout the province.