Page Seven / La Paz
The president of the Commission of Plural Justice, Public Ministry and Legal Defense of the State of the Chamber of Senators, Virginia Velasco, said that the Political Constitution of the State (CPE) must be opened to grant a life sentence to rapists and feminicides. The current norm establishes a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.
“We are going to analyze those cases. For example, life imprisonment or the sum of sentences is not in our Constitution. It must be opened because it deserves a modification and for that we would have to go -even- to a referendum in consultation with the Bolivian people”, declared the legislator.
The clarification was made yesterday after hearing the request of some of the organizations of relatives of femicide victims, who demanded life imprisonment for murderers or rapists. The legislator added that “work must be done to modify the other regulations, it may be that we see issues of sum of penalties, as in other countries.”
Velasco considered that these proposals will be analyzed and for this work a multidisciplinary team is needed. “The Legislative Branch must work on modifying norms and the Executive on policies to prevent violence in our country,” he said.
He considered necessary the modification of the norms that sanction judges, lawyers or prosecutors who benefit a criminal. “The law of the legal profession must be changed, the Law of the Judicial Organ must also be modified to sanction judges. There are good lawyers, judges and prosecutors, but at the 2016 summit it came out (as a sanction) to suspend the credentials of the judges for a certain time”, he said.
