66. Meanwhile, by Resolution No. R-25-160, the National Congress also declared the removal from office of the titular judges and alternates of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal “because they had been appointed without taking into account the provisions of article 209 of the Constitution,” and issued seven resolutions on November 26, 2004, in which it designated nine titular judges and their alternates of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.73 C. Facts related to the impeachment of some members of the Constitutional Tribunal 1. Processing of the impeachments under the laws in force at the time of the facts 67. Article 130(9) of the 1998 Constitution established the possibility of impeaching certain officials to decide whether they were guilty of “statutory or constitutional offenses committed in the performance of their functions.”74 In particular, this article stipulated that it was a function of Congress: Article 130(9): To proceed to impeach, at the request of at least one quarter of the members of the National Congress, the President and Vice President of the Republic, the Ministers of State, the Comptroller General, and the Attorney General, the Ombudsman, the Prosecutor General, the superintendents, the members of the Constitutional Tribunal and of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, during the exercise of their functions and up to one year after their term has concluded. (Bold added) 68. The impeachment proceedings were regulated in articles 86 to 91 of the 1992 Law on the Organization of the Legislative Function.75 Also, the motions of censure and the possibility of the impeachment of the members of the Constitutional Tribunal were regulated in articles 92 to 104 of that law.76 69. Regarding the procedure of bringing charges, the proceeding was as follows: (i) the charges were filed before the Speaker by submitting, in writing, the charges against the official, for acts or omissions attributed to him in the exercise of his functions that were classified as offenses by the legislator or legislators bringing the charges, who could not be more than one for each bloc of political parties represented in the National Congress; (ii) once signed, the charges were submitted to the President of the Legislature and then forwarded by him to the Political Monitoring and Control Committee for verification; (iii) the Political Monitoring and Control Committee, within five days, forwarded the charges and the evidence obtained to be examined by the plenary of the National Congress; (iv) during the said five days, the official who had been accused could exercise his right of defense before the Political Monitoring and Control Committee orally and in writing; (v) at the request of the party concerned, an additional period of five days could be granted in order to verify all the evidence; (vi) once this non-extendible five-day period has expired, all the proceedings were forwarded to the Speaker of the National Congress, and (vii) in the five days following the expiry of the last time frame, the Speaker or the legislators who had filed the charges could propose the respective motion of censure to Congress through the Speaker and, 73 Cf. National Congress Resolutions No. R-25-170, R-25-171, R-25-172, R-25-173, R-25-174, R-25-175 and R-25-176 of November 26, 2004 (file of annexes to the report, tome I, folios 83 to 85). 74 1998 Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador, article 130(9) (file of annexes to the answering brief, tome I, folio 3681). 75 Cf. Law on the Organization of the Legislative Function of Ecuador (file of annexes to the answering brief, tome I, folios 3639 to 3641). 76 Cf. Law on the Organization of the Legislative Function of Ecuador (file of annexes to the answering brief, tome I, folios 3640 and 3641). 23