[4][5] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[18][19] 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.

[21][22] 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.

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.

[10][32] 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.

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.

[41] 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.

[42] 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.

[46] 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.

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.

[52] 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.

[56][α] 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.

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.

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.

[68][69] By election day, the final results gave Ortiz little more than four percent of the vote, leaving him in fourth place, having been displaced from third by the unprecedented support attained by evangelical pastor Chi Hyun Chung.

As dean of the Senate, Ortiz took charge of reestablishing dialogue with his MAS colleagues, seeking to reach agreements in the legislature with the aim of annulling the previous elections, convoking new ones, appointing new electoral authorities, and extending the government's soon-to-expire mandate.

After a series of intensive negotiations, Ortiz succeeded in reaching an agreement with the MAS's "conciliatory wing", who agreed to pass a law scheduling new elections in which Morales would not be allowed to participate.

[88] In his place, Áñez appointed Ortiz, charging him with the task of reactivating the economy in the face of the health crisis and implementing a previously announced employment plan.

Speaking to media outlets, Ortiz pledged to coordinate economic reactivation with the private and public sectors, including working closely with small businesses and entrepreneurs to alleviate their concerns.

"[89][90] However, as noted by El Deber, with Ortiz's entry into the executive, Áñez lost her "best negotiator" and main strategist in the legislature, a move some government officials later admitted "was a mistake".

[92] The program was based on five pillars: provide working capital to companies and producers; establish new sources of employment; encourage the consumption and purchase of national products; and reduce public spending.

In terms of cutting unnecessary costs, Ortiz estimated that the plan would seek to reduce state spending by up to fifteen percent, an idea El País described as "classic austerity measures recommended by IMF (International Monetary Fund) orthodoxy.

For these reasons, Ortiz was criticized for having "electoralized" the government's economic program, creating a plan that bolstered Áñez's presidential candidacy rather than focusing on short-term crises, as his predecessor had done.

Without a presidential candidate at the top of the ticket, the MDS's entire ballot was annulled, leaving the party devoid of parliamentary representation, a fact that caused great unrest among its leadership.

[5] To achieve this, Ortiz has proposed further decentralizing the country's pre-existing departmental autonomies by implementing a federalist system, granting them broader powers over their internal fiscal and domestic policies.

At the same time, Ortiz's economic program never contemplated the privatization or closure of State-owned enterprises previously established or nationalized during the Morales era, nor did it consider major changes to the pre-existing salary policy.