government, which does not seem to be a convincing argument in regards to their fear in proportion to the actual risk invoked. VI DEFENSELESSNESS OF THE STATE: INADMISSABILITY OF ITS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY VI.1. The State’s hollow defense 153. The foregoing considerations regarding the event, although they deviate from the highly respectable opinion of the majority of the Court, in any case, at least make it clear that there are considerable weighty arguments that could have been put forward by the State in these proceedings. For example, the very clear legality of the code of criminal law in force at the time of the event, the extraordinary institutional significance of the act of anarchic violence to which the journalist was referring in his article, the absence of persecution or harassment by the authorities, the rare incident of the kidnapping of the leader of the executive and the public interest in institutional continuity. 154. None of this could have been overlooked by the State when considering the case, because they are arguments that could never escape the most elementary attention of any lawyer or attorney, no matter how inexperienced or novice they might be. However, the State did not try any of them before the Court. 155. However, everything indicates that the defenselessness of the State is not due to negligence or legal malpractice, but to clear intentionality. Proof that the State has not been bereft of adequate advice and its actions exhibited very good legal technique, is the skill with which it handles the not at all random partiality of its acknowledgment of responsibility. It separated with a fine scalpel the matter it rejects, limited exclusively to the very high sums claimed by the alleged victims due to unproven property damage, the broad acknowledgment of the responsibility for their claims all in detriment of the (real or ontic) convicted person, that is, the leader of the main opposition party in the fierce political polarization of the country. 156. I again stress that it is not possible to ignore that the acknowledgment of responsibility did not even take place during the current administration, but rather during the mandate of the president who was empowered in the aforementioned manner based on the disputed popular referendum and whose actions directed against his opposition produced the particular institutional context to which reference was made, under such conditions that his complaints are now declared admissible in the Inter-American Commission and are processed in the UN. 157. In the context of the extremely harsh internal political confrontation, it is clearly obvious that the formal sentencing of the State and the real or ontic sentencing of the political leader of the main opposition party, is perfectly effective for the ruling political sphere. In particular for the previous president empowered by the referendum, to the extent that they will be able to broadcast the condemnation widely, showing themselves to be zealous defenders of Human Rights, supposedly unknown by an opposition that they will paint as inclined to be authoritarian, dictatorial and as persecuting critical journalism. 158. The acknowledgment of the responsibility of the State in these circumstances and with the singular limitations indicated in its intelligent partiality, is nothing more than a formal and not material defense, totally empty of content that might defend. It is carried out by the same administration of the president who had caused the displacement of judges, which resulted in the conviction of his vice president, whom he keeps detained until this very day, and the opposition leader himself, on whom 24