The administrative silence and its implications in Ecuador. Guarantees rights?

Abstract

The constitutional right of petition is related to the good performance of the public administration, in which the administered ones can go before the state organs to request, claim or ask about issues related to their particular interests, so the public officials have to give them an adequate response within of the time that the law grants them competence to respond. Facing the lack of effort of public servants, to respond in the time established in the law, the figure of administrative silence operates, which can have positive effects when, over time, is presumed that the lack of response is “affirmative” and that will directly generate a referral to the competent body to declare positive the pretention of the citizen who attended, meaning that this request is allowed based on the law; and on the other hand we maintain the administrative silence with negative effects that directly works by the passage of time which allows the public administration to generate a negative response without prejudice of responsibility for not having responded, finding itself as a possible defenselessness situation for the citizen, whom have waited for the time allowed by law for the official to respond, so then a “tacit negative” is handled.