During the trial of President Guillermo Lasso, it was noted that important resolutions against the President were passed by a majority of one vote, which reminded me of some of the many transcendental issues in history that were passed by narrow one-vote margins.

Thus US President Andrew Johnson – who was the vice president who succeeded Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated – was not removed from office by the US Senate because he was just one vote short of reaching the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution.

In Ecuador, let’s recall that after the Marxist Revolution of 1845, our poet and jurist José Joaquín de Olmedo lost the presidential election to Ramón Roca in the Constituent Assembly by one vote, which moved Vicente Rocafuerte, who presided over the Assembly, to complain that he was a trading stick was preferable to Junín’s pen.

In the specific case, the Constitutional Court passed with one vote the six required to declare the admissibility of the request for criminal prosecution of the President of the Republic proposed by the members of the Parliament, in the number prescribed by the Constitution; A few days ago, due to the lack of a single vote, the Supervisory Commission of the National Assembly could not execute the order to reject the political trial; Seeing himself defeated, the President of the Commission closed the session, leaving the assembly in confusion, and then contradictorily stated that his client, the President, was responsible for the trial. What a contrast between the clear procedure of the Constitutional Court and the murky procedure of the Supervisory Commission, which muddies the procedures and leaves the Assembly in a situation to vote on a non-existent, unborn report! As the author of these lines has publicly said, he is against this impeachment because of the increase in the instability of the country, but the level shown by the pretenders, on both sides, is miserable; how depressing it is that every day we witness what happens in the quotations on the vote exchange. The much condemned Machiavelli would be right again when he said that the end justifies the means.

With these defenders, it would be better if the president, with a sense of history, fulfills his often assumed obligation to appear before the National Assembly and face those who accuse him.

It is contradictory that, since the Constitutional Court is invited by an express provision of the Constitution to rule on the admissibility of the political process against the President of the Republic, then it is the Supervisory Commission that can decide otherwise. According to the same criteria, the Parliament could also prosecute the president for other accusations rejected by the Constitutional Court.

You cannot continue with this Constitution, it simply does not work. But change is always difficult, as it is with the Chilean people, who oscillate between left and right. But we, in Ecuador, must also persevere. (OR)