The Ministry of the Presidency will absorb part of the functions of the recently closed Ministry of Justice, eliminated from the state structure after being considered an instrument of “persecution”, reported this Monday the head of that portfolio, José Luis Lupo.
The minister explained that the redistribution includes the integration of the five vice ministries that depended on Justice, now reorganized to continue operating under new attributions.
“The five vice ministries (of the former Ministry of Justice) are being absorbed into two vice ministries, which are moving to the Ministry of the Presidency,” Lupo stated in a press conference before the media at the Government House, in La Paz.
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As part of this reorganization, he announced the creation of the vice ministries of Transparency, Legal Security and Human Rights, in addition to the one for Equal Opportunities, Decolonization and Depatriarchalization.
The minister also indicated that the former Vice Ministry of Consumer Defense will be reorganized within the Ministry of Productive Development, “which is where it should be,” he specified.
Also, the Plurinational Victim Assistance Service (Sepdavi) and other entities that operated in the previous justice structure will move “transitorily” to the Ministry of the Presidency.
Lupo maintained that the objective of these measures is to ensure that “never again” the Justice system has a “valuation”, while pointing out that the actions are framed in the fight against corruption and the search for “transparency” and an “open” Government.
He also indicated that the decision does not respond to a “white massacre” policy, but rather to an intention to “shrink the State”, which, in his opinion, was “oversized” during the administrations of Evo Morales (2006-2019) and Luis Arce (2020-2025), so that it now responds to defined “functions and priorities”.
President Rodrigo Paz decided on Thursday to definitively close the Ministry of Justice, despite having appointed Freddy Vidovic as its head days before, at the suggestion of Vice President Edmand Lara. Vidovic served for less than two weeks.
Subsequently, it was learned that the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) reported that Vidovic had a three-year prison sentence that prevented him from holding the position, which led Paz to execute his campaign proposal to eliminate the portfolio.
The president justified the closure by considering that the Ministry of Justice became a mechanism of “political persecution” against opponents and a space for the “abuse of political power towards society” during the almost 20 years of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in the Executive.
Following the decision, around a hundred organizations grouped in ‘Alerta 348’ expressed their “deep concern” about the “risks” that the closure implies for the protection of human rights, especially in key areas such as equal opportunities, prevention and attention of violence, and access to Justice.
The closure also raised tensions between Paz and his vice president, both elected by the Christian Democrat Party (PDC), due to Lara’s accusations of having been excluded from Executive decisions.
