service under equal conditions.143 108. Taking into account its previous case law, the Court reiterates that the transition regime in Venezuela seeks a legitimate purpose in keeping with the Convention: that the Judiciary be composed of the most suitable individuals to perform its judicial functions. However, in practice, the application of the regime has not been effective for achieving the proposed objective.144 First, this is because the regime has lasted nearly 12 years. On March 18, 2009, the SCJ even issued a decision ordering the “comprehensive restructuring” of the entire Judiciary and that all judges be submitted to “an obligatory institutional evaluation process,” as well as allowing the Judicial Commission to suspend and dismiss judges who did not pass this evaluation.145 In addition, the above-mentioned speech of the SCJ President (supra para. 70) indicated that, despite the time that has passed, the restructuring process was ongoing in different ways. 109. Second, despite the adoption of the Ethics Code to regulate the disciplinary regime of the judges, the case file does not indicate that the disciplinary tribunals have been established (supra para. 66) 110. Third, in 2010, 56% of the Judiciary’s judges were provisional and temporary according to the speech by the SCJ President and, at the time of the facts of this case, this figure was 80% (supra paras. 69 and 71). In addition to creating impediments to judicial independence (supra para. 97), this is particularly relevant because Venezuela does not offer such judges the guarantee of tenure required by the principle of judicial independence. In addition, the Court observes that provisional and temporary judges are appointed discretionally by the State; in other words, without competitive examinations (supra paras. 67 and 68), and many of them have been made permanent through the “Special Program to Regularize Permanence (PET).” This means that the respective posts have been filled without allowing individuals who are not part of the Judiciary to compete with the provisional judges to accede to these posts. As indicated in the Reverón Trujillo case, even though evaluations of suitability have been made under the PET, this procedure grants job security to those who were initially appointed on an entirely discretionary basis.146 111. Based on the above, the Court will now analyze the impact that the use of this jurisprudential criteria of free removal of provisional and temporary judges may have had in relation to the alleged violation of the rights in this case. 4. Obligation to provide grounds and right to defense 4.1. Arguments of the parties 112. The Commission argued that the victim was denied judicial guarantees “because she was not informed of the comments made to the Judicial Commission” and “because she was not allowed the opportunity to exercise her defense in an adversarial proceeding.” It added that “although it was not part of a formal disciplinary procedure, the removal [of Mrs. Chocrón Chocrón from her post] was similar to a sanction because of the nature of the result, as well as its justification 143 Cf. Case of Reverón Trujillo v. Venezuela, supra note 12, para. 118. 144 Cf. Case of Reverón Trujillo v. Venezuela, supra note 12, para. 119. 145 Cf. Decision No. 2009-0008 of the Supreme Court of Justice, supra note 70, folios 1402 and 1403. 146 Cf. Case of Reverón Trujillo v. Venezuela, supra note 12, para. 121. 35