18
disagree with the Report issued by the Inter-American Commission pursuant to Article 50 of
the American Convention, Articles 51(1) and 61 thereof empower it to submit the case to
the consideration of the Court for the Court to determine the facts and apply the law
pursuant to its contentious jurisdiction. Lastly, the State’s allegations in this section, that
the right to present an independent candidacy cannot be inferred from Article 23 of the
Convention, does not correspond to a preliminary objection. Based on the above, the Court
rejects this argument.
*
*
*
64.
Lastly, sixth, among other arguments, the State affirmed that: (i) over and above
the Commission’s autonomy to assess the grounds for forwarding the case to the Court,
which cannot be the subject of preliminary objections, the Commission’s infringements of
the procedural norms of its Rules of Procedure resulted in lack of procedural balance that
led to the defenseless of the State; (ii) the Commission’s powers are discretionary but not
arbitrary when considering and complying with the parameters of Article 44 of its Rules of
Procedure. In particular, in this regard, the State alleged that: (a) the decision to forward
the case to the Court was not based on obtaining justice in a specific case, owing to the
alleged victim’s lack of interest in presenting his candidacy during the electoral process; (b)
the gravity of the alleged violation was nullified by the existence of an effective means of
protecting political rights before the Electoral Tribunal; and (c) the possible effect of
adopting a decision affecting the legal order of the member States in the terms proposed by
the Commission, would evidently be negative, because it would imply that it was insufficient
that they had electoral administrative bodies and courts for the protection of political rights,
and were obliged to adapt their laws to create a specific mechanism so that individuals
could contest the constitutionality of electoral laws.
65.
The Commission argued that: (i) the Commission’s application was not lodged
hastily, but responded to the State’s failure to comply with the recommendations contained
in the reported adopted under Article 50 of the Convention; (ii) none of the Commission’s
actions affected the State’s right of defense or its possibility of complying with the
recommendations made by the Commission; (iii) neither the Charter of the Organization of
American States nor the Convention contain a provision that subjects the quasijurisdictional acts of the Commission to the scrutiny of other organs of the Organization;
indeed, the actions of the Commission are guided by a series of guarantees, including the
principles of good faith and of interpretation pro homine, which ensure the supremacy of the
Convention, added to the guarantees of a specific nature relating to the individual petition
procedure, such as the conditions of admissibility, and the principles of adversarial
proceedings, procedural equality and juridical certainty; monitoring that the quasijurisdictional actions of the Commission adhere to the said principles is a function of the
Commission itself; (iv) the Court itself has indicated that the Commission’s assessment of
whether or not to forward a case to the Court should be the result of a distinctive
autonomous collective exercise carried out by the Commission in its capacity as a
supervisory organ of the American Convention and, consequently, the grounds on which it is
forwarded cannot be the subject of a preliminary objection; and (v) the Commission has
predominance in the application and interpretation of the criteria that it established when
issuing its Rules of Procedure, including the criteria for the adoption of the decision to
submit a case to the consideration of the Court. Based on the above, the Commission asked
the Court to reject this preliminary objection.
66.
The representatives did not add any observations to those submitted by the
Commission.