Oscar Ortiz (Bolivian politician)

As its secretary-general, Ortiz sought to position the MDS as a national political party with a view toward the 2019 general elections. For Ortiz, the prospect of not participating in the election was out of the question, with internal discussions on whether the party would go it alone or form an alliance taking place long before the start of the campaign. Should the MDS have competed on its own, the nomination of its leader, Costas, was a "natural" choice, with Ortiz profiled as a possible vice-presidential candidate. During negotiations with the Revolutionary Left Front (FRI)—which nominated former president Carlos Mesa—the MDS conditioned an alliance on the inclusion of Ortiz on the ticket as Mesa's running mate. The FRI rejected this option as Mesa preferred to choose his own companion, frustrating negotiations.

Two days after the rupture of the BDN alliance, the MDS presented Oscar Ortiz as its presidential candidate, with Senator Edwin Rodríguez of Potosí as his running mate. Their campaign was officially launched on 2 January 2019, the first working day of the year. Ortiz outlined his intention to tour the entire country, conducting meetings with differing sectors of the population to present BDN's platform and hear the needs of the citizenry. Throughout the campaign, Ortiz maintained a steady third place in opinion polling, hovering at around six to eight percent of the vote. Ortiz's low likelihood of attaining enough support to challenge Morales in an eventual runoff led many critics to call on him to drop out of the race in order to avoid a split in the opposition vote. Among those sharing such concerns included Ortiz's own running mate, Rodríguez, who unexpectedly withdrew his candidacy in July while Ortiz was on a campaign visit to Brazil. Nonetheless, Ortiz vehemently refused to remove himself from the race, accusing Rodríguez of having been bought by opposing candidates. A month later, BDN selected Deputy Shirley Franco of Cochabamba to serve as Ortiz's new running mate.

A practicing Roman Catholic, Ortiz has expressed opposition to the legalization of abortion; as a senator, he voted against reforms to the Penal Code that would have expanded the grounds for legally terminating a pregnancy. Instead, Ortiz stated that authorities "should not wait for a femicide to occur", outlining the expansion of criminal sanctions and access to public services as a means of reducing the need for abortions. On LGBT rights, Ortiz conveyed his support for the community's right to life without discrimination, though he opposes the recognition of same-sex unions as marriages or the adoption of minors by same-sex couples. During his 2019 campaign, Ortiz referred to the evangelist presidential candidacy of Chi Hyun Chung, conveying his belief that "the presidency is [not] a religious position."

Ultimately, the MDS settled on allying with UN, its longtime partner, effectively continuing the previous UD coalition under a new name. The alliance, dubbed Bolivia Says No (BDN), was sealed on 13 November 2018 and formally launched the following day. Shortly thereafter, BDN began analyzing whether it would nominate a single presidential ticket or if candidates from UN and MDS would separately contest the primary elections scheduled for January 2019. The latter option would have made the alliance one of the only fronts facing a competitive primary. While Doria Medina was the only presidential candidate profiled by UN, the MDS considered the likes of Costas, Ortiz, and former Beni governor Ernesto Suárez, with the latter two also seen as "ideal" running mates. By 27 November, BDN had settled on a compromise, nominating Doria Medina for the presidency with Ortiz seeking the vice-presidency. However, within hours of the scheduled announcement, Doria Medina publicized his and his party's decision to withdraw from the alliance, instead choosing to sit out the 2019 election cycle.

Ortiz's tenure as a member of the opposition focused its efforts on investigating and denouncing acts of corruption within the government. Between 2015 and 2016, in his capacity as president of the Rural Native Indigenous Peoples and Nations Commission, Ortiz conducted an audit of the country's Indigenous Fund. In 2017, he presented Chronicle of a Betrayal, a 400-page report alleging rampant embezzlement and financial mismanagement within the organization. Ortiz's investigation found that of 1,110 projects commissioned to provide Bs 730 million worth of aid to the indigenous population, only 107 were executed to completion, and over half had irregularities. Additionally, some Bs 692 million destined for 1,048 projects were redirected into private accounts, with the rate of these acts increasing in periods preceding elections, leading Ortiz to conclude that the ruling party had used aid money to finance its electoral campaigns. According to the senator, the combined economic damage done to the State amounted to almost Bs 700 million, though estimates by the government comptroller placed the financial loss at a little over Bs 100 million. "The main victims of this scandal were the indigenous peoples who saw their cause delegitimized [and] their organizations prostituted", Ortiz stated in a later op-ed published by Página Siete.

For the 2014 electoral campaign, the MDS aligned itself with UN, forming the Democratic Unity (UD) coalition to combat the MAS as a single front. As part of its strategy of nominating former parliamentarians and politically experienced professionals to guarantee a high degree of representation in the legislature, UD selected Ortiz as its candidate for senator. The coalition attained a distant second place at the polls, returning Ortiz to the Senate to complete a non-consecutive second term.

During the 2010 regional elections, Ortiz supported the gubernatorial candidacy of Santa Cruz Prefect Rubén Costas, aligning CP with Costas's Truth and Social Democracy (VERDES). Shortly after assuming office, Costas appointed Ortiz to his cabinet as head of the newly established Secretariat of Institutional Coordination and Autonomous Development. While in the Costas administration, Ortiz assisted the governor in formulating the Social Democratic Movement (MDS), a political project that sought to unite the disparate parties of the Media Luna region into a single national opposition front capable of challenging the MAS. More than thirteen groups made up the movement, including Ortiz's CP, Costas's VERDES, and Savina Cuéllar's Liberty and Renovating Democracy (LÍDER). In May 2013, the three main organizations presented a merger request to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which rejected it on the grounds that the law only allowed political parties to be fused, not civic groups. To circumvent this, Ortiz's party requested authorization from the TSE to legally change its name from Popular Consensus to Social Democratic Movement, which was accepted. The decision gave rise to the MDS's formal establishment four months later at a Founding Congress in which Ortiz was elected as the party's secretary-general.

The culmination of Ortiz's rupture with the president came on 22 September, following Áñez's decision to yield the government's ninety-two percent stake in the Cochabamba Light and Power Company (ELFEC) to its former owner, the Cochabamba Mixed Telecommunications Cooperative. ELFEC was nationalized in 2010, with its annual profits transferred to the National Electricity Company from there on. The decree authorizing the return of shares was formulated by the Ministry of Government, headed by Murillo, despite the fact that electrification policy was not part of the ministry's purview. Economists criticized the decision as an attempt at privatization through an irregular fast-tracked procedure. For Ortiz, the decree "[went] against the legal system" by returning the shares without a prior audit process or legal review. For these reasons, he remained unwilling to sign the document, resulting in his departure from office, accompanied by two other ministers.

Following its inability to remove Morales from office, the opposition reinitiated negotiations with the government. In October, the MAS and PODEMOS reached an agreement in which the opposition-controlled Senate would approve the call for a referendum to ratify the new constitution. In exchange, the MAS conceded to the modification of over a hundred articles in the draft document and the convocation of new general elections ahead of schedule, with Morales pledging not to seek reelection after 2009. Ortiz opposed the agreement, leading a group of around thirty parliamentarians who voted against the referendum.

Ortiz's opposition to the new constitution led to his estrangement from Quiroga and PODEMOS, which suffered an internal implosion around this time. In March 2009, the still-president of the Senate announced his defection from the alliance, taking eleven of its Santa Cruz parliamentarians with him and establishing Popular Consensus (CP), a regional civic group led by himself that sought to contest that year's general elections. Following the presentation of the new party, senators from both the MAS and PODEMOS called on Ortiz to resign as president of the Senate, arguing that he no longer belonged to any of the upper chamber's recognized caucuses. Ortiz refused, maintaining administrative control of the Senate for the duration of his term.

In August 2009, CP and UN agreed to establish an electoral coalition, forming the Alliance for Consensus and National Unity (UN-CP). The group nominated UN's Samuel Doria Medina for the presidency, with Ortiz seeking reelection as UN-CP's candidate for senator. By the end of the campaign, the alliance failed to attain significant support, exiting third on election day with five percent of the vote, a margin insufficient to keep Ortiz in office for a second term.

In 2008, seeking to bolster his mandate amid continued unrest, Morales sought the support of Congress for the approval of a recall referendum against himself and the nine departmental prefects. At internal meetings regarding the topic, the majority of the PODEMOS caucus opted to support the referendum as a means of blocking the pending enactment of the new constitution. Though Ortiz personally opposed the decision, as president of the Senate, he chose not to use his power to block the plebiscite's convocation. Ultimately, Morales survived the vote with the support of sixty-seven percent of the population, while the opposition suffered the loss of two of its prefects in Cochabamba and La Paz.

Throughout Ortiz's term, the Senate found itself primarily preoccupied with the ongoing process of entirely reforming the nation's Constitution, a project spearheaded by Morales. Just over a month after assuming office, in March 2006, Ortiz voted in favor of sanctioning the convocation of a Constituent Assembly charged with drafting a new constitution, a decision approved unanimously by both the MAS and opposition. Inaugurated in Sucre on 6 August, the Constituent Assembly was tasked with completing its work within a year but quickly found itself bogged down by disputes over which sections of the text necessitated two-thirds majority approval. On 3 August 2007, three days before its initially prescribed mandate expired, the Senate's four caucuses agreed to extend the Assembly's term to 14 December. Ortiz initially supported the decision, believing that the agreement consolidated the threshold of two-thirds for the approval of the document's final text. Three months later, however, amid mass protests in Sucre, the MAS majority in the assembly opted to reconvene itself in Oruro, where the final draft was approved in a marathon session boycotted by PODEMOS. The circumstances of its passage led Ortiz to later state that the new constitution "never had legitimacy."

The control exercised by the opposition over the upper chamber constituted the main counterweight to Morales's ability to legislate during his first term. Though the MAS was able to win the presidency of the Senate in 2006—owing to the votes of the two senators from National Unity (UN) and the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR)—it was unable to repeat that victory in ensuing years. In 2007, neither the MAS nor PODEMOS won control of the Senate, with Senator José Villavicencio of UN being elected to preside over the body. By 2008, however, both the MNR and UN opted to lend their support to PODEMOS, which put forward Ortiz to hold the position, beating out the more conciliatory Carlos Böhrt for the nomination. The promotion of Ortiz as head of the upper chamber was a considerable setback for the ruling party as, compared to his more centrist predecessor, Ortiz aligned himself with more right-wing sects of the opposition. Attempts by the MAS to dislodge Ortiz from the presidency the following year also failed, with his bid for reelection counting the support of most of the opposition and even two ruling party defectors.

Significant social conflicts at the turn of the twentieth century fostered a change in political action in Santa Cruz. Emulating the tactic of mass mobilization utilized by the country's indigenous and unionist sectors to achieve their goals, Cruceños took to the streets demanding expanded departmental autonomy. By 2004, Ortiz's early support for the decentralization process had led him to gain regional notoriety. When Quiroga contested the presidency in 2005, Ortiz was invited to join the former vice president's Social Democratic Power (PODEMOS) alliance as its candidate for senator. The election presented mixed results for the conservative coalition. While Evo Morales of the Movement for Socialism (MAS-IPSP) won the presidency, PODEMOS won the most Senate seats.

During the democratic administration of Hugo Banzer, between 1997 and 1999, Ortiz served as a senior advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Trade and as general counsel for the Ministry of Housing. Around this time, he developed political links with Vice President Jorge Quiroga, and though he was never a member of the governing party, he promoted a change in leadership within Nationalist Democratic Action through the adhesion of young, professional, and liberal-minded figures to its ranks.

Oscar Miguel Ortiz Antelo (born 28 September 1969) is a Bolivian businessman and politician who served as minister of economy and public finance from July to September 2020 and as minister of productive development from May to July 2020. As a member of the Social Democratic Movement, he previously served two terms as a senator for Santa Cruz from 2015 to 2020 on behalf of the Democratic Unity coalition and from 2006 to 2010 on behalf of the Social Democratic Power alliance. Nearing the end of his second term, Ortiz was his party's presidential candidate, attaining fourth place in the annulled 2019 general elections. During his first term, he served as president of the Senate from 2008 to 2010, the last opposition legislator to preside over the upper chamber as of 2023. Outside of national politics, Ortiz served as president of the Union of Latin American Parties from 2018 to 2021 and has been the rector of the Bolivian Catholic University at Santa Cruz since 2021.

Oscar Ortiz was born on 28 September 1969 in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the son of a prestigious doctor from a middle-class family. He attended his city's Marist School, later studying at the Private University of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's in corporate law. Throughout his career, Ortiz held numerous administrative positions in the institutions most relevant to Santa Cruz's business community. Between 1991 and 2005, he served as an executive and later general manager of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and sat on the boards of the Business Development Foundation, the Federation of Private Entrepreneurs, and the Santa Cruz Exhibition Fair, among others.