5/19/2021 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly In Sourthern Hemisphere Engagement Network, Inc. v. Anti-Terrorism Council,[17] a petition was filed attacking the constitutionality of R.A. No. 9372. The Court ruled that there was no actual justiciable controversy because the possibility of abuse in the implementation of the law does not make a petition justiciable. Allegations of abuse must be anchored on real events before courts may step in to settle actual controversies involving rights, which are legally demandable and enforceable. In Republic v. Roque,[18] a similar petition assailing the constitutionality of R.A. No. 9372 did not have an actual justiciable controversy because it failed to demonstrate how the petitioners therein are left to sustain or are in immediate danger of sustaining some direct injury as a result of the enforcement of the assailed provisions of R.A. No. 9372. Nevertheless, the Court, through the years, has allowed litigants to seek from it direct relief upon allegation of "serious and important reasons." Diocese of Bacolod v. Commission on Elections[19] summarized these circumstances in this wise: (1) when there are genuine issues of constitutionality that must be addressed at the most immediate time; (2) when the issues involved are of transcendental importance; (3) cases of first impression; (4) the constitutional issues raised are better decided by the Court; (5) exigency in certain situations; (6) the filed petition reviews the act of a constitutional organ; (7) when petitioners rightly claim that they had no other plain, speedy, and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law that could free them from the injurious effects of respondents' acts in violation of their right to freedom of expression; [and] (8) the petition includes questions that are "dictated by public welfare and the advancement of public policy, or demanded by the broader interest of justice, or the orders complained of were found to be patent nullities, or the appeal was considered as clearly an inappropriate remedy."[20] It must be clarified, however, that the presence of one or more of the so-called "serious and important reasons" is not the only decisive factor considered by the Court in deciding whether to permit the invocation, at the first instance, of its original jurisdiction over the issuance of extraordinary writs. Rather, it is the nature of the question raised by the parties in those "exceptions" that enables us to allow the direct action before the Court.[21] https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/66432 7/28