Chile celebrates a new constitutional plebiscite this Sunday. It is the second attempt in four years to change its current Constitution, because in 2022, a text drafted by a convention dominated by the left was categorically rejected by 62% of citizens. On this occasion, the proposal comes from a Constitutional Council with a right-wing majority and, above all, from the conservative right of the Republican Party, which was left with 23 positions in the body, as determined by the voters last May. And today, some 15.4 million citizens are called to the polls to decide the fate of this letter supported by the right and rejected by the ruling party of President Gabriel Boric, the non-governmental center-left and even ultra sectors that surpass the right to the Republicans. Although the latest known polls gave an advantage to the vote againstit is an election with an uncertain outcome, among other things due to the mandatory nature of the vote, which was only reinstated a year ago.
If you win the option against, the current Constitution remains in force and, in the short and medium term, there would be no new attempts. If the alternative succeeds in favor, President Boric must promulgate a decree for the promulgation of a new charter that his political sector considers to “radicalize the neoliberal project”, as Domingo Lovera, a constitutionalist from the ruling Frente Amplio, a sister coalition of Podemos, assures EL PAÍS. For its defenders, on the other hand, “it is not a right-wing Constitution,” according to one of the architects of the proposal, the constitutionalist Jorge Barrera, who advises the Republican Party, a group very close to VOX, assures this newspaper.
The current Constitution was drafted in 1980, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. But since the beginning of the transition it has been subjected to some 70 reforms, the main ones in 2005, during the government of socialist Ricardo Lagos. In fact, the current letter bears his signature, not Pinochet's. “The 2005 reform removed Pinochet from the Chilean Constitution,” the lawyer and former minister of the Chilean Constitutional Court, Gonzalo García, told EL PAÍS. But for a part of the left, especially for the Broad Front generation, it had always been Pinochet's Constitution that had to be overcome. Except now, when they prefer it over the proposal. “I never thought I was going to defend Pinochet's Constitution,” said in October a pro-government member of the Constitutional Council where the text that will be put to a plebiscite this Sunday was worked on.
It is part of the paradox of this referendum: the proposal is defended by the right, especially the conservative Republican Party, which never sought to change the current Constitution and joined the process very late. On the other hand, the left, whose purpose for more than 40 years has been to replace it with a democratic one, rejects it as worse than the current one.
Meanwhile, society awaits the referendum with little interest and is rather overwhelmed by the public security crisis, its main concern, as surveys constantly reflect.
End of the constituent moment
This Sunday, Chile closes a four-year cycle that began with the social outbreak of 2019 that put the right-wing Government of Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022) and Chilean democracy on the ropes. In the midst of massive demonstrations in the streets and unprecedented violence in Chile's recent past, practically the entire political spectrum, except the radicals on both sides, agreed on a constituent route. There, in the agreements of November 2019 in the National Congress for peace and a new Constitution, was the deputy Boric, who was about to sign the agreement despite the reluctance of his own coalition. It was an attempt by Chilean politics to institutionally lead the revolts and social demands.
The first attempt to change the Constitution coincided with the presidential election, once Boric came to power in March 2022, at only 36 years old, the youngest in the history of Chile. His government made the initial mistake of taking sides with the work of the Constitutional Convention dominated by the hard left, which operated between 2021 and 2022. “Any result will be better than a Constitution written by four generals,” the president said as soon as he arrived. to La Moneda. One of his closest ministers, Giorgio Jackson, conditioned the reforms of the program on the approval of that proposal. But it was a fiasco: 62% rejected it in September of last year. It was a very hard blow for the left, who lost a historic opportunity to replace the current Constitution. And it represented the defeat of the president's political project, which had to incorporate the socialists of the moderate left into his Cabinet, which the Frente Amplio criticized from its origin for his role in the transition.
After the frustrated first process, the Chilean political class, with the Boric Government and the traditional right included, agreed almost immediately in November 2022 to a new attempt. Unlike the first, with many limits to avoid repeating mistakes. Analyst Ascanio Cavallo described this last essay as “one of the most complicated that could have been designed, emulating parliamentary mechanics and its labyrinth of first and second procedures, commissions, plenary sessions and even mixed commissions.” What no one had foreseen, not even themselves, was that the Republican Party would lead it, achieving 23 of the 50 seats on the Constitutional Council. With the traditional right with 11 seats, the opposition was the majority.
Today, when analyzing how Boric's Government would look according to this Sunday's result, the influential analyst Carlos Peña assures EL PAÍS: “Boric's political project has already failed. “This is not worth throwing dirt in your eyes.” As the analyst Octavio Avendaño wrote in this newspaper, it is the right that has already won: “If we win the in favor “You will have a Constitution written to suit you and, if it is rejected, you will be left with the current one.”
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