the petitioner, the court may consolidate the petition with the criminal action. (b) Where the offended party chooses to file a criminal action, the petition for protection order is deemed instituted with the criminal action, unless the offended parly reserves the right to institute it separately. (Emphasis supplied) Petitioner proceeds to argue that Mendenilla's filing of a separate petition supposedly anchored on the same factual premises, and seeking the same reliefs as those of the criminal complaint filed by Maria Sheila is an act of forumshopping. He, therefore, claims that Mendenilla's petition should have been dismissed. I.D Petitioner's conclusions are misplaced. The word used by Section 8 is "suspend." To suspend is to momentarily, temporarily, or provisionally hold in abeyance. It is not to perpetually negate, absolutely cancel, or otherwise obliterate. The right of persons other than the victim to file a petition for the issuance of a protection order therefore persists; albeit, they may not exercise such right for as long as the petition filed by the victim subsists. Mendenilla's petition for the issuance of a protection order was filed with the Quezon City Regional Trial Court after Assistant City Prosecutor Odronia had already dismissed Maria Sheila's complaint for slight physical injuries and maltreatment under the Anti-VAWC Law. Thus, even if Maria Sheila's Complaint came with a petition for the issuance of a protection order and even as Section 8 of A.M. No. 04-10-11-SC stipulates the suspension of other people's right to file petitions for the issuance of a protection order, this suspension is rendered inefficacious by the remission of Maria Sheila's prior petition. Stated otherwise, there was no longer a prior petition to compel a suspension. I.E Petitioner's position, however, fails to account for an even more fundamental and pivotal detail: Assistant City Prosecutor Odronia's dismissal of the complaint-affidavit filed by Maria Sheila came as a result of a preliminary investigation. This meant that, to begin with, there was not even a prior judicial proceeding which could lead to the issuance of a protection order. The criminal action in which Maria Sheila would have been deemed to have impliedly instituted her own petition for the issuance of a protection order did not even commence. Jurisprudence has long settled that preliminary investigation does not form part of trial. [54] Investigation for the purpose of determining whether an actual charge shall subsequently be filed against the person subject of the investigation is a purely administrative, rather than a judicial or quasi-judicial, function.[55] It is not an exercise in adjudication: no ruling is made on the rights and obligations of the parties, but merely evidentiary appraisal to determine if it is worth going into actual adjudication.[56] The dismissal of a complaint on preliminary investigation by a prosecutor "cannot be considered a valid and final judgment."[57] As there is no former final judgment or order on the merits rendered by the court having jurisdiction over both the subject matter and the parties, there could not have been res judicata — actual or looming as to bar one (1) of several proceedings on account of litis pendentia — as to bar Mendenilla's petition for being an act of forum shopping. Res judicata is the conceptual backbone upon which forum shopping rests. City of Taguig v. City of Makati,[58] explained in detail the definition of forum shopping, how it is committed, and the test for determining if it was committed. This test relies on two (2) alternative propositions: litis pendentia and res judicata. Even then, litis pendentia is itself a concept that merely proceeds from the concept of res judicata: Top Rate Construction & General Services, Inc. v. Paxton Development Corporation explained that: Forum shopping is committed by a party who institutes two or more suits in different courts, either simultaneously or successively, in order to ask the courts to rule on the same or related causes or to grant the same or substantially the same reliefs, on the supposition that one or the other court would make a favorable disposition or increase a party's chances of obtaining a favorable decision or action.