There is not much to say about the popular consultation proposed by President Daniel Noboa, except that it is insignificant and will probably not pass the analysis of the Constitutional Court. The high degree of improvisation that can be assumed, at a truly critical moment for the country’s internal security, is disheartening. Almost everything that has been proposed could be reformed through the National Assembly without the expense of taking the citizens of Ecuador to the polls. In any case, today I want to focus on the responsibility that the legislature has to undertake the most urgent reforms.

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Since the crisis we are experiencing is also a crisis of the judiciary as a whole, I believe it is necessary to discuss thorough reforms of the Organic Law on guarantees of jurisdiction and constitutional control and the Organic Code of Judicial Function. One of the biggest problems we face is the trivialization of constitutional justice, which abuses and denatures guarantees of jurisdiction, especially precautionary measures, habeas corpus and protective suits. Through its jurisprudence, the Constitutional Court has done an important job in order to adequately delimit the use of these guarantees. The problem is that judges who are ready to abuse the law do not read constitutional practice. It may not even be just a problem of training and coaching, but of ethical concern or terror of threats.

Extortion exacerbates insecurity

This space is not enough to address this question, but I will at least point out the urgency of a real judicial career. This requires that universities commit not only to training litigants, but also judges, and that access to a judicial career implies a much deeper training process, since the exercise of judicial function must be a life option, not an opportunity for profit. Perhaps the training of judges should be understood as a post-graduate study, in which the School for Judicial Function, the Study Center of the Constitutional Court and the most reputable law faculties in the country must participate. Furthermore, it would be interesting if the provincial judges as a condition had to be judges of the first level first; as well as that the people’s judges had to go through the earthly courts first.

It is significant that the processes of selecting judges, in this sense, drastically include the participation of the academic community and the observation of civil society, even international missions in the case of the National Court. The process of selecting national judges, recently suspended, is everything that a competition cannot be: suspicious, not at all transparent, disorganized… Of course, this implies, beforehand, the restructuring of the Judicial Council, generally so moderately politicized, to minimize their influence or ability to intervene in those processes. Again, universities have a huge role to play in this debate if we think the country deserves a true judicial career. (OR)