The drafting of the new Constitution of Chile entered this weekend in the final stretch with the delivery of the draft of the text to the Harmonization Commission, one of the last steps in the process, which will take place on Monday.
Between applause and emotion, the 154 members of the Convention concluded on Saturday the drafting of the contentafter the last votes of the articles that will be part of this sketch.
“We are very happy to formally announce that we already have the draft of the new Constitution. Today, after 103 plenary sessions, many of them marathon, we finally close the constitutional debate,” celebrated the president of the Convention, María Elisa Quinteros.
“This was a tremendously democratic and participatory task,” he added.
Mondayand in a wink towards the decentralization of the country, the Convention will meet in the ruins of Huanchaca, in Antofagasta (to the north)where he will deliver the text to the Harmonization Commission.
This instance will have until June 9 to propose improvements to the legal wording and coherence, detect possible contradictions and eliminate repeated content.
almost 500 items
In total there are 499 articles that make up the draft, many aimed at increasing social rights: create a universal health system, strengthen public education, gender co-responsibility, protect the environment or increase the rights of indigenous peoples, who until now had not been included in any constitutional process.
“Today we have concluded a stage. Long live the peoples of Chile!” exclaimed the former president of the Convention and Mapuche academic Elisa Loncón.
Less hopeful were the less than 40 constituents from the right, who accuse the constituent text of being “indigenous” and “partisan”, and some even call for rejecting it in the exit plebiscite.
“The preparation of a proposal for a new Constitution for Chile remains pending, one that unites and does not segregate. Because this Convention, that work, did not do it,” said conservative Marcela Cubillos, former Minister of the Environment.
Exit plebiscite in September
In parallel to the harmonization of the text, the Preamble Commission will also work, in charge of preparing the text that opens the Magna Carta, and the Transitory Norms Commission, in charge of the transitory articles necessary for the transition between one Constitution and the other.
Subsequently, the final votes will take place, which could be extended until June 29, according to the official schedule, to present the text to citizens on July 4.
If approved in the exit plebiscite on September 4, the new Constitution would replace the current one, inherited from the Augusto Pinochet regime (1973-1990) and considered by many to be the origin of the great inequalities in the country due to its neoliberal court.
The constituent process was born as a political way to dismantle the wave of massive protests that began in 2019a crisis that left thirty people dead, thousands injured and shook the foundations of Chile, one of the most stable countries in Latin America.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from Efe
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