Selection monitors of the Ombudsman warn about loss of legitimacy and credibility

The lack of legitimacy and loss of credibility, apart from the deinstitutionalization of the Ombudsman’s Office were the main observations made by the observers who participated in the selection process of the candidate for this position.

“It is a fact that the defense institution is currently notoriously co-opted and politicized in relation to legitimacy and credibility with which it had in its beginnings. We had trusted in the need to restore that moral force to contribute effectively to the defense and protection of human rights and in the word of the Vice President of the State”, indicates a statement by 11 institutions that participated as observers of the process, gathered around to the Citizen Observation of Democracy Alliance (OCD).

This Friday afternoon, a maneuver by the MAS allowed the election of the official candidate as Ombudsman, in this way the incompetence to obtain a person in charge of that office in a concerted manner was saved. The ruling party took 4 months and 18 days to achieve its objective.

the observers described as “anomalous” the appointment of Pedro Callisaya Aro as a defender and declared themselves concerned about the destruction of democratic institutions, and recalled that even in this vote, Callisaya Aro obtained fewer votes than in the five previous processes.

“For it, its owner must enter through the front doorthat is to say, with the consensus of the political forces – as was recently announced – emulating the election of the first Ombudswoman, and not with doubtful and questioned strategies, such as the one that has surprised us today”, points out another part of the document.

They remembered that it is at this time that a credible institution is requiredafter the denunciations of the violation of fundamental rights from the State institutions themselves and they alluded to the cases of the coca growers of Los Yungas and the violent seizure of an office of the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia.

They warned that the demonstration of abuse this afternoon can be replicated in the election and selection of other authorities of State, such as the Comptroller or the candidates for magistrates the following year.