During this day, the Supreme Court decided to annul the opinion that ordered the closure of its functions to the Universidad La República by the Superintendence of Education.
The defense of the educational institution, made up of lawyers, Ciro Colombara and Aldo Diazwent to the highest court in mid-January to file a complaint against the decision of the Court of Appeals of Santiago (December 30, 2021), arguing that there were “serious faults and abuses” by the Superintendency of Education to not taking into account the Recovery Plan presented by the university to avoid its closure.
On April 7, Ciro Colombara stated in the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court that “noor only a reactivation plan was drawn up by the rector Fernando Lagos and his administration team, but internal investigations were initiated that end in the exercise of criminal actions with respect to the previous administration “.
“It is not denying that there have been problems, what is being said is that these problems did not have the magnitude that the superintendent attributed to them, due process was not respected to correct those problems and all that with the aggravation of a living university, which is working today”, he added.
Supreme Court ruling
In its 40-page ruling, the Supreme Court established that in this case “due process was flagrantly violated.” In this sense, the highest court detailed that “the fact that the SES (Superintendence of Higher Education) recognizes that it applied The measure of letter a) of article 4 of Law 20,800 forced the complainant to follow the procedure established in article 5 of the same Law. plan, following a favorable report from the Ministry of Education, or formulating observations so that the claimant must present the pertinent amendments within a term of fifteen days”.
They add that “in this case, the Authority not only violated the law, insofar as it did not exhaust the previous instance to approve or formulate observations and previously request the report of the Ministry of Education, but also made a prejudgment, since, in its concept the recovery plan presented by the University, did not have the quality of such, given the magnitude of its shortcomings, that is, it pronounces on the merits of the matter, skipping a stage of the procedure, thereby preventing the complainant from at least have access to the referred period and, therefore, to be heard, in a procedure that ended up applying the most severe of sanctions, clearly violating the rules of due process”.
In the operative part, the Supreme establishes that “the claim of illegality filed by the aforementioned university institution is accepted and, therefore, Resolution No. 165 of March 29, 2021, issued by the Superintendency of Education, is nullified. Superior”. This refers to the opinion that ordered the closure of the house of studies.
They add that “because of what was decided above and, given the nature of the procedure under study, likewise, the other acts that, as a consequence and based on the annulled Resolution, based their decision, in particular, Agreement No. 49 dated May 5, 2021, issued by the National Education Council”.
