The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, called this Tuesday (7) for December 17 a referendum in which the population will decide whether or not to approve a new text for the country’s Constitution.
Boric signed the call in Santiago, after receiving the final text from the Constituent Council of Chile, which wrote the proposal.
“The December 17th referendum has officially been called and I invite all our compatriots to inform themselves and participate, fulfilling the inevitable citizen duty of voting,” said Boric.
In September last year, Chileans overwhelmingly rejected (more than 60% of the votes) a new proposed Constitution for the country, criticized as “excessively progressive” for containing measures such as the expansion of State spending (on the creation of systems national social security and health insurance, for example) without detailing where the resources would come from to pay for this, differentiated legal treatment for native Chilean peoples and constitutional provision for abortion.
In May of this year, a new constituent, this time made up mostly of right-wing and center-right names, was elected and in recent months it has drawn up a new proposal.
Proponents of the text argue that the proposal guarantees freedom and security and provides economic and legal security to the country, while the left branded it “partisan” and said that it perpetuates the “neoliberal model” installed by the current Constitution, in force since the dictatorship ( 1973-1990) and reformed dozens of times since the return of democracy.
Beatriz Hevia, from the Republican Party and president of the Constituent Council, said in her speech that the text presented today “seeks to take charge of institutional evolution and the legal framework, but also the challenges of the times and the urgency of citizens”.
“True Chileans hope that this constitutional process will come to an end and that we, politicians, will put aside our ideological and programmatic differences and place ourselves at their service,” said Hevia. (With EFE Agency)
#Boric #receives #proposal #Constitution #calls #referendum #December