Pablo Peralta M. / La Paz
Pedro Callisaya is the favorite candidate of the majority of the legislators of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) to be Ombudsman. He was a judicial official for more than eight years, in the governments of Evo Morales and Luis Arce.
On Thursday, in the Legislative session, the votes of the MAS assembly members were divided between Callisaya and Porfirio Machado. The first, in round one, achieved 65 votes and in the second round, 82. With these figures, he positioned himself as the favorite of the majority of the MAS. Machado, on the other hand, got 30 votes in the first round and 11 in the second.
“We have 96 legislators, including deputies and senators, and the candidate Callisaya yesterday (Thursday) concluded with 82 votes. That is to say, 14 of our votes, we presume, are making their own determinations, which are absolutely valid,” said Juan José Jauregui, a MAS deputy.
Callisaya has a law degree from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA). He is also a teacher for the Normal Simón Bolívar. He was a member of the Departmental Court of Justice of La Paz between December 2012 and June 2016, and between March 2017 and April 2021.
He then served as Director of Real Rights, between April 2021 and February of this year.
Regarding Real Rights, he recently published the book For whom the bell tolls? The problem of registering Real Rights in Bolivia, in which text he states, among other details, the following: “(…) Despite the imminent institutional extinction, the social need to have a property register subsists. Hence the need to characterize the Bolivian registration system as an input for the genesis of another institutionality”.
Regarding his passage through charges in the Judicial Branch, in Thursday’s session, Carlos Alarcón, head of the Citizen Community (CC), argued that Callisaya was favored by a “maneuver” by the MAS that sought to exclude two prominent applicants with the so that only Callisaya remains as “the best qualified”.
“Can anyone assume that a person who has held these positions has done so without the endorsement of the MAS? Can we assume that? Obviously not, then. That would be tremendously naive, ”she maintained without mentioning the applicant’s name.
Faced with the position of MAS legislators, that nothing links applicants to that party, Daly Santa María, senator from CC, maintained that reality shows that to get a job in the state you need to be from MAS and cited the provision of the statute of that party that states that in the appointed positions “the figure of neutral authorities does not exist”, since everyone must be a MAS militant. “That’s where the logical and natural mistrust comes in,” she said.
Callisaya was also a teacher at the UPEA, at the School of State Judges, at the School of State Lawyers, and held the following positions at the Ombudsman’s Office: professional in citizen services in El Alto (2001-2002), chief direct management (2002-2005), head of the La Paz office (2006-2010) and national head of the citizen services unit (2010-2012).
The work plan that he presented to the Joint Commission of the Constitution, in the interview phase, is entitled “Ombudsman: rebuild trust”.
