“In any other constitutional system, this would be science fiction, but it is a reality in El Salvador,” said the investigating judge who was impeached a year ago.

On their first day in office, Vice President Najib Boukil a year ago rejected the only control of the presidency the presidency: the Constitutional Chamber, five judges elected for the 2018-2027 term and in the same maneuver they imposed. Five government judges.

On that Saturday, May 1, in which deputies presented the ideas of Nuevas for the first time with this unexpected measure, which lawyers deemed unconstitutional because it was not the process dictated by Magna Carta, President Bukele’s conference earned wide international condemnation: from the United States to the United States European Union , the powerful democracies of the world, were confused by the way in which the accelerated measure was being carried out.

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“How did they do that? I would say it was an arbitrary exercise of power, of rights, but it was more than that: it was an excessive abuse of power. They rejected the Constitutional Chamber violating all international constitutional safeguards, processes and standards,” sums up a year after the event the only judge in the Chamber who did not resign that day as did his four other colleagues: Aldo Cádir, Marina Toronto, Carlos Sánchez, Armando Pineda.

The dismissed judge still can’t believe what stunned the world by the rush in the decision to gather new ideas, which the world also thinks in amazement.

“The executive, an oversight body, orders the legislature to dismiss the council and instead impose lawyers who control it. In any constitutional system, that would be science fiction, but it is a reality here in El Salvador,” says Aviles, without testifying to what It happened on the 1st of May.

The former official explains in simple words what the government gained from this maneuver, which was denounced as unconstitutional by the same chamber that issued a decision that afternoon that enforced his accusations.

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He explained that “the chamber is issuing an order that what the council was doing is removing the executive body and also the main and most important control that the judiciary exercises over other bodies.”

It also explains in legal terms the consequences of imposing judges allied with the two bodies of state instead, and abolishing any separation of powers.

The constitutional rule of law is annihilated. The constitutional standard loses its supremacy, and its actual power regresses to its mere formal existence, taking us back nearly 200 years. It means that the organic distribution of functions is broken at this time because all the functions have been taken up by one member. Even worse, the guarantee of protection of fundamental rights, guarantee and effective protection has been abolished.

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