In the opinion of March 29, 2023, which accepted the request for the impeachment of President Guillermo Lasso, in connection with the criminal offense of embezzlement, the Constitutional Court stated (paragraph 95.4): “Regarding the examination of the content of the request, the third charge singles out criminal types among those from the article 129 of the Constitution (embezzlement), as well as the facts, does not cause inconsistencies, does not refer to facts that are obviously false or impossible, or notoriously unfounded that lead to a violation of the minimum credibility criterion…”.

The Assembly informs President Guillermo Lasso of the impeachment

This week, the President of the Oversight Commission of the National Assembly, Fernando Villavicencio, revealed (previously done by other actors) that one of the facts on the basis of the impeachment charge does not exist: a contract that is said to have been concluded in July 2022. This is mentioned by the judges in the opinion and identified as basic fact 7 (HB7); and for the judges it is part of the evidence (basic facts) for the construction of derived facts (HI) and final facts (HC) of the alleged embezzlement, given that they “satisfy the minimum criterion of credibility.”

Considering the comments, it seems that the legitimacy of the opinion is called into question, and it must be reviewed by the Constitutional Court itself; along with reformulating the minimum probability for the future and replacing it, as it should, with the criterion of maximum probability, when it comes to the pursuit of truth, political stability and legal security, social peace. The Constitutional Court cannot ignore the seriousness of what has been revealed, since as the guardian of the Constitution and democratic values ​​it has implicit powers to protect higher level values.

Henry Cucalón, Minister of the Government: You cannot prosecute and remove the president without proving anything with the story that it is political

The requirements of the credibility of the narrative contained in the petition for revocation, which the Court considered to be fulfilled despite the fact that they contradict the concept of reality and real existence, must be reconsidered; and, if that is the case, the Court itself can set aside its judgment, since it has that implicit power, even to set aside res judicata, as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has found.

The Constitutional Court of Peru gave several examples of this. Its former judge Eloy Espinosa-Saldaña Barrera said: “… the Constitutional Court of Peru on legal certainty is clear: there is no opposition to the possibility for a judicial body to declare the nullity of its own illegal decisions, if they are correct for this reason the law ensures reasonable knowability, reliability and calculability, thereby correcting what is inadequately ensured in case of serious deficiencies or errors (…). It cannot be considered that the protection of contradictory, inconsistent and incompatible solutions with the constitutional legal order meets the idea of ​​reasonable predictability referred to by the mandate of legal certainty (.. .).Based on illegal considerations, no certainty or prediction is possible (…).Every illegal decision is contrary to the principle of legal certainty…”. (OR)