The political trial of the President of the Republic, Guillermo Lasso, has fallen into a legal vacuum due to the evident inconsistency regarding the crimes on which the report of the Temporary Commission is based and the constitutional and legal regulations referred to for its creation.

In accordance with Article 129 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador, political persecution takes place on the assumption that one of the crimes is verified, grouped into three types: “crimes against state security”, “crimes of concussion, bribery, embezzlement or illegal enrichment” – known as crimes against public administration-, and “crimes of genocide, torture, forced disappearance of persons, kidnapping or murder for political reasons or reasons of conscience” -known as crimes against humanity-.

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In their ignorance of the basic criminal norms, the 104 members of the assembly – among them lawyers – ignored that the crime of inaction is applicable only to crimes against life, health, freedom and personal integrity, and not to the crimes of bribery, extortion and the accused for embezzlement, so there is no crime imputable to the president. Therefore, the application of her essential request is unfounded: to single out the misdemeanor attributed to President Las, and the criminal qualification that must be carried out, according to Art. 148 of the ZOKP with the described procedure, in the type of criminal offenses from Art. 129 of the Constitution.

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With regard to the subject of the opinion, the verification that the Court must carry out refers exclusively to the questions of the way in which the request was formulated, that is, that the attributed behavior is in accordance with the existing type of criminal offense, with appropriate evidence. The credibility of the evidence corresponds to the findings of the Assembly and is a fundamental part of the impeachment trial. This was stated by the Constitutional Court – binding case law – in the case of Vice President Jorge Glas from 2017, opinion no. 001-17-dd.t-cc, case no. 0001-17-dt of December 21, 2017.

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In the case of the vice-president of Glas, the request to the Court included, by CAL, accompanying documentation that justified the appropriateness of the attributed behavior to the type of punishment imposed on him – bribery, extortion, embezzlement and illicit enrichment – without the court ruling on its validity of evidence, but only on the verification of the material examination of the same with an appropriate description of the criminal offense charged against him, the only authority vested in him.

The role of the Constitutional Court in exercising its jurisdiction is to ensure compliance with the admissibility procedure provided for by the Constitution and relevant laws and to guarantee review in the event of any formal failure in the CAL, the first filter of admissibility.

No other presidential conduct appears in the report that would fit the other constitutionally required grounds for the admissibility of a political trial. Several legislative blocs, aware of their mistake, have repented and each announces its own trial. (OR)