of political crisis persisted during which the arbitrary decision to terminate the members of the Constitutional Tribunal was taken on November 25, 2004. 88. As the Judgment records, one of the serious irregularities was that, on December 1, 2004, four motions of censure had already been submitted to a vote and had not obtained sufficient affirmative votes. Despite this, on December 8, 2004, Congress decided to hold the votes again. Although, in one of the votes that was held for a second time, it was indicated that this was done owing to the presumed undue joinder of two of the motions of censure, when re-opening the said motions of censure to a vote no legal grounds were given to justify this new vote. 89. Regarding the vote held on December 8, 2004, and just to mention the most visible inconsistencies: (a) the session was called by the President of the Republic as a special session, even though Congress was not in recess; (b) the vote was held even though, during the session on December 1, a similar vote had been held and the motions had not obtained sufficient votes, based on which it had been declared that the “the motion is rejected”; (c) the session on December 1, 2004, had been closed without the members of Congress filing an appeal for reconsideration concerning the presumed inadmissibility of joindering the two motions of censure, and thus it was inadmissible to hold the vote again on December 8; (d) the vote on the removal of the judges was held in the session during which the termination of all the justices of the Supreme Court of Justice was declared, without having been announced previously on the agenda, and (e) the statements made by the members of Congress during that session made no mention of specific facts or evidence related to the accusations against the members of the Constitutional Tribunal. 90. In relation to the legal grounds applicable to impeachment that were in force at the time of the facts, article 130(9) of the Ecuadorian Constitution indicated that the members of the Constitutional Tribunal: […] could be impeached for statutory or constitutional offenses, committed in the performance of their functions. Congress may censure them in the case of a declaration of guilt, by a majority of its members. The censure shall result in the immediate removal of the official (underlining added). 91. While article 199 of the Constitution stipulated that: The organs of the judiciary shall be independent in the exercise of their obligations and attributes. No function of the State may interfere in matters within their competence. The justices and judges shall be independent in the exercise of their jurisdictional powers and even vis-àvis the other organs of the Judiciary; they shall only be subject to the Constitution and the law. 92. Meanwhile, article 9 of the 1997 Law on Constitutional Control established that the members the Constitutional Tribunal: (…) shall not be held responsible for the votes they emit or for the opinions they express in the exercise of the attributes of their office. 93. In these conditions, the applicable domestic law at the time of the facts recognized the mechanism of impeachment for the members of the Constitutional Chamber in relation to their office, but its purpose could not be for the National Congress to review the control of legality or constitutionality made in the judgments delivered by the Constitutional Tribunal, based on the principle of the separation of powers and the Constitutional Tribunal’s exclusive competence in this area. In addition, the Constitution established the term of office of the judges as an uninterrupted period of four years (articles 275 and 276 24