04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly Significantly, when queried during the oral arguments on the non-inclusion of the MILF, the petitioners feebly explained that first, they could not implead the MILF because they did not know where it could be served with summons; and second, they feared that impleading the MILF would be futile as the group does not acknowledge the Court's jurisdiction over it. The importance of joining the MILF in this case cannot be over-emphasized. While the non-joinder of an indispensable party will generally not deprive the court of jurisdiction over the subject matter, the only prejudice to the winning party being the non-binding effect of the judgment on the unimpleaded party, the situation at bar is different. Here, the unimpleaded party is a party to the proposed MOA-AD no less and the prospective agreement sought to be annulled involves ONLY two parties--the impleaded respondent GRP and the MILF. The obvious result is that the Court would not be able to fully adjudicate and legally decide the case without the joinder of the MILF--the other indispensable party to the agreement. The reason is simple. The Court cannot nullify a prospective agreement which will affect and legally bind one party without making said decision binding on the other contracting party. Such exercise is not a valid, or at least an effective, exercise of judicial power for it will not peremptorily settle the controversy. It will not, in the normal course of things, write finis to a dispute. [4] Such consequent legal aberration would be the natural result of the non-joinder of MILF. A court should always refrain from rendering a decision that will bring about absurdities or will infringe Section 1, Article 8 of the Constitution which circumscribes the exercise of judicial power. Prematurity and Mootness The MOA-AD is but a proposal on defined consensus points. The agreement has remained and will remain a mere proposal as the GRP has put off its signing permanently.[5] The parties to the MOA do not have, in short, the equivalent of, or what passes as, a perfected and enforceable contract. As things stand, the line dividing the negotiation stage and the execution stage which would have otherwise conferred the character of obligatoriness on the agreement is yet to be crossed. In a very real sense, the MOA-AD is not a document, as the term is juridically understood, but literally a piece of paper which the parties cannot look up to as an independent source of obligation, the binding prestation to do or give and the corollary right to exact compliance. Yet, the petitioners would have the Court nullify and strike down as unconstitutional what, for all intents and purposes, is a nonexistent agreement. Like a bill after it passes third reading or even awaiting the approval signature of the President, the unsigned draft MOA-AD cannot plausibly be the subject of judicial review, the exercise of which presupposes that there is before the court an actual case or, in fine, a justiciable controversy ripe for adjudication. A justiciable controversy involves a definite and concrete dispute touching on the legal relations of parties who are pitted against each other due to their demanding and conflicting legal interests.[6] And a dispute is ripe for adjudication when the act being challenged has had direct adverse effect on the person challenging it and admits of specific relief through a decree that is conclusive in character. As aptly observed in Tan v. Macapagal,[7]for a case to be considered ripe for adjudication, it is a prerequisite that something had been accomplished by either branch of government before a court may step in. In the concrete, the Court could have entered the picture if the MOA-AD were signed. For then, and only then, can we say there is a consummated executive act to speak of. elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 180/203