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 . 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.

Early life and career 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.

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.

Chamber of Senators First term (2006–2010) 2005 general election

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.

Tenure 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 defeated Ortiz 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.

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."

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.

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.

2009 general election

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.

Between terms 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 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.

Second term (2015–2020) 2014 general election

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.

Tenure 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 Bs730 million worth of aid to the indigenous population, only 107 were executed to completion, and over half had irregularities. Additionally, some Bs692 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 Bs700 million, though estimates by the government comptroller placed the financial loss at a little over Bs100 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.

2019 presidential campaign