Maguindanao del Sur

Also known as: Province of Maguindanao del Sur — formal designation · Salatan Magindanaw — Maguindanaon name · Southern Maguindanao — the del Sur (south) half of the divided mother province

Government

Definition

Maguindanao del Sur (Maguindanaon: Salatan Magindanaw) is a landlocked province in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) on Mindanao, created when the old province of Maguindanao was divided in two by Republic Act No. 11550 — “An Act Dividing the Province of Maguindanao into Two (2) Provinces, Namely: Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur,” signed by President Rodrigo Duterte on May 27, 2021 — and ratified in the plebiscite of September 17, 2022. Its capital and largest municipality is Buluan, and its population was 741,221 in the 2020 census. (LawPhil — RA 11550, Wikipedia — Maguindanao, Wikipedia — Maguindanao del Sur)

The province comprises 24 municipalities grouped around the Allah Valley and the old Maguindanao core towns — from Ampatuan, Mamasapano, and Shariff Aguak to Buluan, Datu Piang, and General Salipada K. Pendatun — and is predominantly Maguindanaon in population, with Tiruray, Tagalog, and English also spoken. Under RA 11550 each new province constituted its own lone legislative district, and Maguindanao del Sur is classified as a first-income-class province. (LawPhil — RA 11550, Wikipedia — Maguindanao del Sur)

Identities

Authority	Value
Wikipedia	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maguindanao_del_Sur
Wikidata	Q114019748
DBpedia	https://dbpedia.org/page/Maguindanao_del_Sur
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings	Maguindanao del Sur (Philippines)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	N/A
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Province of Maguindanao del Sur — formal designation
Salatan Magindanaw — Maguindanaon name
Southern Maguindanao — the del Sur (south) half of the divided mother province

Examples and Analogies

A province split by ballot, not by decree: RA 11550 did not take effect on signature alone; it required ratification by the voters of the mother province — the September 17, 2022 plebiscite — so the division is an act of both Congress and electorate, pairing del Sur (24 municipalities, capital Buluan) with del Norte (12 municipalities, capital Datu Odin Sinsuat). (LawPhil — RA 11550, Wikipedia — 2022 Maguindanao division plebiscite)
Verified provincial data:
Enabling law: Republic Act No. 11550, signed May 27, 2021
Ratification: plebiscite of September 17, 2022; results proclaimed September 18, 2022
Vote: 706,558 yes (99.27 percent) against 5,209 no (0.73 percent), on 86.93 percent turnout — the del Sur area voting 379,510 yes to 3,002 no
Capital: Buluan (Section 5, RA 11550)
Municipalities: 24, including Buluan, Shariff Aguak, Mamasapano, Datu Piang, and Ampatuan
Population: 741,221 (2020 census); 813,243 (2024 census)
Area: about 5,471.74 square kilometers per current reference data
Boundaries: Cotabato province (north and east), Maguindanao del Norte (west), Sultan Kudarat (south) (Wikipedia — Maguindanao del Sur, Wikipedia — 2022 Maguindanao division plebiscite, LawPhil — RA 11550)

Usage Scenarios

1. Local Governance and Transition Research

The province is a live case study in transition governance: from the proclamation of September 18, 2022, through the April 2023 officer-in-charge appointments, to the first elected officials who took office on June 30, 2025. (Wikipedia — 2022 Maguindanao division plebiscite, Wikipedia — Maguindanao del Sur)

2. Studying Bangsamoro Institutional Design

Within BARMM studies, the division shows how the region’s map was redrawn during the Bangsamoro Transition Authority’s extended interim period, with the first BARMM elections reset to 2025 under RA 11593 keeping the transition government in place while the two provinces stood up. (LawPhil — RA 11593, Wikipedia — 2022 Maguindanao division plebiscite)

3. Determining Provincial Assignment

Researchers tracing which new province a town belongs to work from Section 3 of RA 11550, which lists the municipalities of each province — the controlling text for records, jurisdiction, and representation questions after September 2022. (LawPhil — RA 11550)

Strategies

Start from the statute, not the map: RA 11550 fixes the municipal composition (Section 3), capitals (Section 5), legislative districts (Section 9), and transition rules (Section 50); later practice is checked against these sections, not against pre-division maps. (LawPhil — RA 11550)
Read the numbers with their census dates: the undivided province’s 1,667,258 (2020, including Cotabato City) is not comparable with del Sur’s 741,221 or del Norte’s 926,037 without noting which unit each figure counts. (Wikipedia — Maguindanao, Wikipedia — Maguindanao del Sur)
Follow the transition chronology for officeholders: officials before June 30, 2025 were officers in charge — Mariam Mangudadatu, appointed in April 2023, was del Sur’s OIC governor — so citations should say “OIC” or “elected” explicitly; the undivided province’s earlier history is treated in this wiki’s entry on Maguindanao Province, not here. (Wikipedia — 2022 Maguindanao division plebiscite)

Security and Safety Measures

Ratification as the safety valve: the division acquired legal force only after the Comelec-conducted plebiscite, so the province rests on a verified popular mandate rather than on legislative fiat alone. (LawPhil — RA 11550, Wikipedia — 2022 Maguindanao division plebiscite)
Comelec administration of the vote: the Commission on Elections set the date (June 22, 2022), administered the vote, and proclaimed the results the next day — standard electoral safeguards applied to a provincial-creation question. (Wikipedia — 2022 Maguindanao division plebiscite)
A statutory transition path: RA 11550 Section 50 and the Comelec’s September 28, 2022 opinion channeling first appointments through the DILG were designed to prevent a leadership vacuum between disestablishment and first elections. (LawPhil — RA 11550, Wikipedia — 2022 Maguindanao division plebiscite)
Continuity of the regional framework: the division occurred inside BARMM’s transition architecture, with RA 11593 keeping the Bangsamoro Transition Authority in office to June 30, 2025 — the regional government never lapsed while the provincial map changed beneath it. (LawPhil — RA 11593)

Historical Context

The undivided Province of Maguindanao counted 1,667,258 residents in the 2020 census (including Cotabato City) and carried the weight of the region’s hardest recent history: the Maguindanao massacre of November 23, 2009, which killed 58 people including 32 journalists, occurred in the municipality of Ampatuan, now in Maguindanao del Sur. On May 27, 2021 President Rodrigo Duterte signed RA 11550 dividing the province; because the law took effect subject to plebiscite, the Comelec set the vote for September 17, 2022. (Wikipedia — Maguindanao, Wikipedia — Maguindanao massacre, LawPhil — RA 11550)

Voters approved overwhelmingly — 706,558 to 5,209 — and the Comelec proclaimed the division on September 18, 2022, raising the country’s count of provinces to 82. A transition followed: rival assumptions of the governorships in October 2022 went unrecognized, and on April 5, 2023 President Bongbong Marcos appointed the officer-in-charge governors — Abdulraof Macacua for del Norte and Mariam Mangudadatu for del Sur, sworn by April 28, 2023 — with the old province’s transition formally ended on January 9, 2023 and the first elected officials taking office on June 30, 2025. (Wikipedia — 2022 Maguindanao division plebiscite)

Challenges and Controversies

The Contested First Governorship

The transition’s roughest episode was the dueling claims of late 2022: on October 13, 2022 Mariam Mangudadatu and Ainee Sinsuat unilaterally assumed the governorships of del Sur and del Norte without recognition from national or Bangsamoro authorities, and assertion around the del Norte chair continued into 2023 before the April 2023 OIC appointments settled the interim succession. (Wikipedia — 2022 Maguindanao division plebiscite)

Governing After the Division

Del Sur inherited deep developmental burdens: 2023 poverty incidence of 32.1 percent, and growth slowing to 6.7 percent in 2022 as the new institutions stood up — the standing argument that division must translate into service delivery. (Wikipedia — Maguindanao del Sur)

Reconciling Area Figures

Reference sources disagree on the province’s land area — current reference data give about 5,471.74 square kilometers, while the main survey text records 4,973.48 — so researchers should cite area with its source. (Wikipedia — Maguindanao del Sur)