In the District Municipality of El Tambo, a technically unsustainable case has been established from the perspective of disciplinary administrative law. Through Council Agreement No. 073, dated August 8, 2025, Sandra Polo Otiniano was appointed as technical secretary of the Disciplinary Administrative Procedure (PAD). However, the official is, at the same time, the offender in a case that must be sent to that same office for the initiation of a sanctioning process.
Legal Report No. 438-MDT/GAJ, addressed to the municipal manager Rubén López, concludes that it is appropriate to initiate disciplinary proceedings due to the non-complete publication of the Council’s Internal Regulations (RIC) approved in February 2023. At the time of the omission, the person in charge of the General Secretariat and, therefore, responsible for executing said publication—was Polo Otiniano.
The report, signed by the Legal Advisory Manager, Erk Segovia, expressly recommends referring the case to the PAD and the Public Prosecutor’s Office. This means that the file generated by the fault attributed to Polo must enter the disciplinary body whose technical secretariat, now, she herself occupies.
From a technical perspective, the situation constitutes an absolute conflict of interest: the technical secretary of the PAD has determining functions such as the admission of files, the classification of the alleged fault, the procedural impulse, the preparation of analysis and the proposal of administrative acts.
That is, if the agreement is not reviewed, the official could end up processing, evaluating and eventually recommending sanctions on her own case, a scenario prohibited by the principles of impartiality and probity established in the General Administrative Procedure Law (LPAG).
