the alleged victims. In the event that any record or remnant of the conviction remains in force, it is appropriate that the judgment of this Court order the State to annul it. V.2. Enmity and reciprocal insults 146. The current opposition leader maintained an old enmity with the journalist who was prosecuted, dating back to times before he assumed the constitutional presidency of the Republic, as the alleged victim himself declares. Judging by the reciprocal expressions, this open antipathy had gone beyond the normal level of political confrontation to the level of a personal enmity. 147. The mix of expressions accused by the alleged victim do not go beyond the common and frequent cases of reciprocal insults, which legislation generally leaves unpunished by way of compensation, as well as those uttered in court. That one of the personal enemies takes public office does not force him to remain silent or prevent him from benefiting from compensation for reciprocal injuries, whatever ethical judgment his conduct deserves, which is obviously independent and out of the jurisdiction of this Court. 148. There is no evidence, since it is not even reported, that the official had used his power to persecute or annoy the person with whom he had an old enmity nurtured by verbal statements and that had transcended the political plane to become a personal matter, since no proceedings by the public authority are invoked against him, except for those resulting from the process that is the subject of this case. The alleged victim himself reports having been threatened by third parties, but not by officials or by order or mandate of them. 149. Whoever assumes a position of open public and personal enmity with a wellknown figure in the midst of very strong political polarization that divides the country and in which he takes sides and actively participates, accusing at times exceptional and violent crimes such as those in this case, knows that in this less than peaceful context hotheads usually appear. Therefore, he cannot rule out, and indeed must even anticipate as inevitable, that there are third parties who cause him some inconvenience or who threaten him without the public authorities, much less the official personally, having any influence over this. No active politician or any person with public prominence in circumstances of tense confrontation is oblivious to this experience. 150. In any case, the fear expressed by the alleged victim is not proven to have been appropriate to the risk he alleges. He even recounts that when faced with a threat, the importance of his complaint was not downplayed by the authorities, although he considered the police investigation insufficient. 151. The assertion that the disproportion of the sanction imposed by the unexecuted sentence would act as intimidation is unsupported: since the dark and unfortunately not too distant times of public executions in town squares, it is known that punishments intimidate, or it is believed that they do, when they are carried out. The degree of subjective fear must always be assessed in view of the objective danger, since it cannot be estimated only based on a person’s greater or lesser degree of sensitivity. Normal fear requires proportionality with the effective presence of a threat. In addition to this, it is not appropriate to accept the statements of the alleged victim as true without other elements of evidence other than their own statements. 152. It should be noted that the alleged victim states that to date he lives outside the country, when for years the opposition leader lacks all power in State territory, which he explains by stating that he fears the return of the opposition party to the 23