2 a) on October 16, 1990, the State Enterprise Trade Union Coordination Agency presented to the Government of Panama, at that time under the presidency of Guillermo Endara, a list of petitions on labor-related issues regarding certain proposed changes in its political program of government that, according to trade union leaders, affected the workers; b) on November 16, 1990, the State rejected all the requests referred to in the previous subparagraph and, as a result, the State Enterprise Trade Union Coordination Agency called for a march on December 4, 1990, and a 24-hour work stoppage the following day. These actions were taken as a “protest movement”, owing to the rejection of the requests made to the President of the Republic; c) on December 4, 1990, the planned march was held. Concurrently, the former head of the National Police Force, Colonel Eduardo Herrera Hassán, and other members of the armed forces who had been detained, escaped from the prison on “Flamingo prison island” and took the principal barracks of the National Police Force during the night of the same day and part of the following day. The State related this act to the march organized by the trade union leaders and therefore the latter decided to suspend the work stoppage on December 5, 1990, at 7.30 a.m. Despite this, the State considered that the trade union action amounted to “an accessory involvement” aimed at overthrowing the “constitutionally installed Government” and proposed the mass dismissal of all the workers who had taken part in the march; to this end, it sent a draft law to the Legislative Assembly; d) on December 10, 19901, without waiting for the approval of the Legislative Assembly and, if appropriate, the entry into force of the said law, the State began a “systematic policy of mass dismissals of public enterprise workers, which concluded with the dismissal of the 270 petitioners in the instant case”, who worked for the following public institutions: the National Port Authority, the Bayano State Cement Company, the National Telecommunications Institute, the National Institute for Renewable Natural Resources, the Institute of Hydraulic Resources and Electrification, the Institute for Water Supply and Sewage Systems, the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Education; e) on December 14, 1990, the Legislative Assembly approved the draft law presented by the Executive and called it Law 25; under this law, “measures are adopted in order to protect democracy and the legal constitutional order in Government institutions” retroactive to December 1990 (article 5, Law 25) (cfr: draft law, annex 14 of the application). Owing to this, the labor-related procedure in a Labor Tribunal, which should have been followed, according to the legislation in force when the events occurred (and when the majority of the dismissals took place), was replaced by “a special claim under administrative law, totally alien to the labor sphere”. The claims were totally rejected by the Supreme Court’s Chamber for actions under administrative law. 1 According to page 3 of the application presented by the Commission, “as of December 10, a systematic policy of mass worker dismissals commenced…”, while page 4 of this document mentions that “the victims [were] dismissed as of December 6, 1990”.