04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly other due to their adverse legal interests.[23] But it is not enough that the controversy exists at the outset. To qualify for adjudication, it is necessary that the actual controversy be extant at all stages of review, not merely at the time the complaint is filed.[24] This is to say that the case is ripe for judicial determination. In Guingona v. Court of Appeals,[25] we had occasion to declare: Closely related to the requirement of "actual case," Bernas continues, is the second requirement that the question is "ripe" for adjudication. A question is ripe for adjudication when the act being challenged has had a direct adverse effect on the individual challenging it. Thus, in PACU v. Secretary of Education, the Court declined to pass judgment on the question of the validity of Section 3 of Act No. 2706, which provided that a private school may be opened to the public, it must first obtain a permit from the secretary of education, because all the petitioning schools had permits to operate and were actually operating, and none of them claimed that the secretary had threatened to revoke their permit. In Tan v. Macapagal, the Court said that Petitioner Gonzales "had the good sense to wait" until after the enactment of the statute [Rep. Act No. 4913(1967)] requiring the submission to the electorate of certain proposed amendments to the Constitution [Resolution Nos. 1 and 3 of Congress as a constituent body (1967)] before he could file his suit. It was only when this condition was met that the matter became ripe for adjudication; prior to that stage, the judiciary had to keep its hands off. The doctrine of separation of powers calls for each branch of government to be left alone to discharge its duties as it sees fit. Being one such branch, the judiciary, Justice Laurel asserted, "will neither direct nor restrain executive [or legislative action] x x x." The legislative and the executive branches are not allowed to seek advice on what to do or not to do; thus, judicial inquiry has to be postponed in the meantime. Before a court may enter the picture, a prerequisite is that something has been accomplished or performed by either branch. Then may it pass on the validity of what has been done but, then again, only "when x x x properly challenged in an appropriate legal proceeding." In the case at bench, there is no gainsaying that at the time of the filing of the initial petitions up to the issuance by this Court of the Temporary Restraining Order, there was an actual extant controversy. The signing of the MOA-AD in Malaysia had been scheduled; several foreign dignitaries were invited to grace the ceremony. The timeliness of the exercise of power by the Court may have prevented a possible constitutional transgression. It was so timely an exercise of judicial review over an actual controversy by the Court such that it may have provided the impetus sufficient for the Executive Department to "review" its own acts, and to decided, subsequently, to abort the entire MOA-AD. However, supervening events effectively eliminated the conflict of rights and opposite legal claims. There is no longer an actual case or controversy between the parties. The GRP Peace Panel, respondents in these consolidated cases, has been elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 194/203