Nadia Cruz, the current Interim Defender, the former magistrate Wilber Choque and the former prefect of La Paz, Adolfo Soliz, They appear on the list of authorized persons approved by the Joint Constitutional Commission.which will enter the challenge phase that begins on Monday.
“I don’t know the particular cases, This Sunday all the names will be officially published and they will be submitted to the challenge period,” said the president of this instance, Senator Rubén Gutiérrez (MAS), when asked about the three names that appear on the list.
Until now, the commission approved the list of 72 qualified people to continue in the race towards the appointment of a new Ombudsman. These 72 applicants represent almost a third of the total number of citizens who attended the call launched by the Assembly, 198 envelopes of interested parties arrived.
Nadia Cruz is the current Ombudsman and faces harsh criticism from the public and of the legislators themselves opposed to the MAS. The masistas are the only ones who did not criticize Cruz’s work and that is why she is considered one of the candidates of the ruling party.
In May 2016, a lawyer linked to the MAS, David Tezanos Pinto, assumed the Ombudsman’s Office supported by two thirds of the ruling party at the head of the then Vice President, Álvaro García Linera. In 2019 Tezanos Pinto resigned due to a marital conflict and at the end of January of that year, Nadia Cruz was appointed as interim Ombudsman and the ruling party promised to appoint a new Ombudsman in a short time. However, Cruz reached the end of the Ombudsman’s mandate established by law, six years.
In the case of the former advisor to the Magistracy, Wilber Choque Cruz, this was a judicial authority in the period 2011-2017 when the second judicial election took place in the country. Choque was one of the magistrates who was sworn in with his left arm raised when he was inaugurated. In 2020 he was linked to the Government of Chuquisaca.
He was elected as the sixth most voted in the elections that chose the new judges, he was a substitute director of Cristina Mamani and when the president of this judicial body, Ernesto Aranibar, died, Choque Cruz took over the presidency by priority in the vote.
As for Adolfo Soliz Antezana, he is a veteran lawyer yex MIR militant, presided over the first Electoral Court after the return to democracy in 1985 and years later he was prefect of the department in 1992.
In his party politics became Minister of Labor and other minor charges. Before the fall of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, in 2002, he held the position of general manager of the Social Investment Fund.