The plenary session of the constitutional convention that drafts a new Magna Carta for Chile approved last Thursday June 2, with a large majority, the rule that prevents the re-election of the presidentGabriel Boric, for a second immediate term, once the current one ends in 2026.
(Read: Chile: President Boric makes his first public account before Congress)
By 124 votes in favor, zero against and three abstentions, the constituents accepted the article which establishes that “the President of the Republic elected for the period 2022-2026 may not stand for reelection for the following period and will continue in office with the constitutional powers for which he was elected.”
(You are interested in: Chilean Congress approves the Escazú agreement: ‘It is a historical fact’)
A decision that the president himself valued positively minutes later on Twitter, where he wrote “Very well. It is what corresponds.”
The reelection of the President of the Republic is one of the articles that had raised controversy in Chilean society, since it is not contemplated in the Constitution that is still in force, drafted in 1980 during the military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet.
While in the draft of the Constitution that is being prepared to submit it to a popular referendum next September, it is introduced that the head of state “may be re-elected, immediately or later, only once”.
Given that Boric has been elected for the transition period between both Magna Cartas, the constituents have decided to approve a “transitory norm” that ensures that, if the new constitutional text is approved, the new “article will take effect with his successor in office.”
The plenary session of the convention rejected, however, the transitory norm that suggested raising the quorum necessary for the current Congress to make modifications to the new Constitution to 2/3.
The proposal, which stated that “during this legislature, constitutional reform projects will be approved with the favorable vote of two thirds of the deputies and deputies and senators in office”, added only 71 votes in favor, far from the 103 necessary to be registered in the draft of the new constitutional text.
The initiative must now return to the Transitory Norms Commission so that it can reformulate it and send it back to the plenary for its consideration.
This reform had generated rejection in the socialist ranks and in the environment of President Boric, who argued that “the quorums have to govern in actum. What does this mean? That there do not have to be specific quorums for a particular legislature.”
EFE
More world news
– Boris Johnson: how close is the prime minister to losing his job?
– War in Ukraine: kyiv confirms the casualty of another top Russian general
– Migration crisis, the central issue in a tarnished Summit of the Americas
#Chilean #Constituent #approves #rule #prevents #Borics #reelection