Just one year after being elected on May 16, 2021 and just ten months after its first meeting, the Constitutional Convention formally presented this Monday in Antofagasta, a region of the country, the first draft of the new Constitution intended to replace the inherited of the 1980 dictatorship and that must be approved in an exit plebiscite on September 4.
Just one year after the election of the Constituent Conventions, and just over ten months after their first meeting on July 4, the Chilean Constitutional Convention formally presented this Monday the first draft of the new Constitution, which accounts for a marathon work and a total of 499 new standards.
The formal presentation of the draft, available to the public on Saturday, the date of the last plenary session of the Convention, was held in Antofagasta, in the ruins of Huanchaca, in northern Chile, and marks the beginning of the presentation on the ground throughout Chile, in its 16 regions, of the constitutional text, in a clear message of political decentralization that has permeated the spirit of the organization.
This Monday three other new commissions also come into operation in the country with a clear calendar: the Harmonization Commission, in charge of avoiding repetitions, giving meaning and homogeneity, correcting style and spelling and making it more coherent, the Preamble Commission, in charge of drafting the introduction of the text, and the Transitory Standards Commission, which must also review more than 200 standards on how the passage between the currently established powers and the new institutions that the new Magna Carta will establish would be carried out if the text is approved in an exit plebiscite called with a mandatory vote for next September 4.
Democratic and social state of rights
The great difference between the current Constitution, which dates from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) in 1980 and was not endorsed by the citizens, and the draft convention it is “the social and democratic nature of rights,” the academic Claudia Heiss, head of the Political Science program at the Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Chile, tells France 24.
“That is the most important change and the change that perhaps guided the entire constituent process, moving from a subsidiary state to a more present state, guarantor of social rights,” says the academic.
“There are more specific elements that have to do with the recognition of excluded and ignored sectors, especially the gender perspective, which is transversal, and the idea of plurinationality and recognition of spaces for original peoples,” says Heiss. Not surprisingly, the new Constitution defines Chile as a “plurinational and intercultural state.”
“There is a clear orientation to include sectors previously made invisible by the political system,” he adds, pointing to sexual diversity or people with disabilities.
Ecological and 21st century constitution
A Constitution therefore very XXI century. “It has many innovations that are not in other Constitutions,” Heiss points out, such as declaring Chile an ecological state.
“Looking to the future, the Constitution addresses some issues that are key for the generations to come, what has to do with the rights of nature, protection of common goods, water, climate change is very present,” says the academic from the School of Political Science of the Diego Portales University, Claudio Fuentes, who has closely followed the Constitutional process through his Twitter account, @mechitasdeclavo, and also @contexto_cl, which disseminates the contents of the Constitution.
In 2019, he stated that the demilitarization of the Carabineros was an urgent task.
Here I explain what it means: 👇🏾
(Spoiler: police would remain professional, hierarchical, not deliberate, obedient)
– Claudio Fuentes S. (@mechitasdeclavo) May 11, 2022
“The second thing is that it pays attention to digital rights, which is an important innovation,” says Fuentes, who also highlights its parity aspect and agrees with Heiss in the plurinational character and social rights as one of the main differences with respect to the Constitution. that currently governs Chile.
controversial rules
For some, this multinational character generates controversy and is difficult to understand. “There are more conservative sectors that argue that what plurinationality is doing is dividing Chile rather than integrating it by allowing indigenous territorial autonomies,” says Fuentes, “this is going to be a controversial issue because it implies redistribution of power.”
The existence of indigenous justice has also been criticized. “It is not that there are two parallel justices, it is not that there is autonomy and whoever enters indigenous justice is going to do what they want and in national (justice) something else,” says Fuentes, “there is a legal framework of respect for human rights” and everything is also supervised by the general judicial system, he says.
A point on which Heiss agrees. “I don’t see the issue of plurinational justice as two justice systems,” he says. “The truth is that indigenous justice exists in other countries, they are not going to bypass criminal law” and it does not mean the end of equality before the law, he affirms.
“It is for limited issues, which have to do with people from the original peoples and it has to be regulated by law. In addition, it establishes that the Supreme Court will always have guardianship over the entire indigenous system, they remain under the general judicial system”, he concludes.
Chamber of Regions
Among some of the regulations that have caused the most controversy is also the elimination of the current Senate, which will be replaced by the Chamber of Regions
“In the changes of the political system, the elimination of the Senate is the most important change, the regime was not changed from presidentialism to parliamentarism, it was not changed from bicameralism to unicameralism”, as had been debated, Heiss points out.
The current proposal “continues to be an asymmetric bicameralism but much less asymmetric than other proposals, the Regional Chamber was given powers not only in regional matters, but also social, budgetary, constitutional reform”, its power was broadened enough so that will not be so diminished in front of the Chamber of Deputies, he analyzes.
“It is quite a disruptive innovation in the political system. In general, a bicameral system was maintained, that Chamber has a power of control, it is balanced in terms of powers, the question is whether it will work effectively in the link with the regions, ”says Fuentes.
Both analysts also point out as controversial the right to abortion, which, although not explicitly, is established in the new text, which must be legislated in Congress. “Placing women’s sexual and reproductive rights in the Constitution has generated a debate about the autonomy of women and their bodies,” says Fuentes.
The equal nature of the composition of the Convention, for the first time in the world, has been reflected in the desire that the future political system also introduce elements of affirmative action in the organs of political representation, at all levels of government and in institutions and representative positions. “It is a very important change in the organization of power,” says Fuentes.
And also, Heiss points out, in substantive terms “it is very innovative to incorporate the issue of care into the issue of social rights”, something that comes from the parity composition of the Convention and that is related “to the overload that women have In relation to the care of the elderly, non-self-reliant people, children, the issue of care as a social right and a duty of the political community” is affirmed in an important way.
Demands of the social revolt
As for the issues of the demands of the revolt “they are not completely settled, because the Constitution does not make public policies, but it does send a signal that they are social rights and therefore must be universal. There is talk of national health, pension, and education systems that seek to strengthen the public role in these three areas, and in that sense, I believe that the proposals respond to the demands of the outbreak but do not leave them resolved, they open the space so that Starting from the law and public policies and the normal political process, progress is made “in them”, Heiss points out.
“There are three areas of social protest, which has to do with social rights (health, pensions, education) which is very much included in the chapter on fundamental rights. Second, with what has to do with lawsuits associated with abuse of power, there is a lot of progress in anti-corruption and probity policies, and third, the climate crisis and the so-called ‘sacrifice zones’ that are related to environmental conflicts in different parts of the country and that are very present in the Constitution”, says Fuentes on his side.
Positive and negative aspects
For the academic of the Diego Portales University, the positive thing about the text of the Convention is that they released the text on time, adjusting to the extendable 9-month period, three more months which meant “many hours of work and dedication”, marathon days voting and even work weekends.
On his side for Heiss, the level of transparency of a Convention that “worked behind open doors, broadcasting the commission and plenary sessions live” has been very positive, something very new in Chilean politics, he says.
The negative part happens for Fuentes, in several scandals, internal tensions and verbal threats that “did not help the republican spirit that the organization should have” on occasions. In addition, the academic points out one of the great crosses of the organization, which did not fully understand the importance of better communicating his work. The Convention “never succeeded in communicating the purpose, the objective and what was going on inside.”
For the academic from the Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Chile, the most negative thing was sometimes “a little dialogue attitude, sometimes that has damaged the image of the Convention, showing an inability to see the adversary as a figure that thinks differently. legitimately”, although he understands it as “a natural part of a political process of this nature”.
However, for both analysts, the text reached does represent a majority of Chileans. “It should represent the majority, but if there is a sector that is the right that was poorly represented in the Convention and that its interests were not taken into account as much, at a political level the right is less reflected in the Constitution,” Fuentes analyzes.
“This new Constitution solves problems of the past, it solves the problem of the ties of the 1980 Constitution, it opens politics to a much more majority position, one of the problems of 1980 was the little weight that majorities had, it is a more democratic that contemplates social rights and in that sense adequately responds to the causes of the outbreak”, evaluates Heiss.
Although the negative side is that “it opens new problems because we don’t know how the Regional State, the plurinational justice, is going to work. It is a very important democratic enlargement and that is going to bring new challenges that the political system of the future is going to have to solve, but they are challenges that are worth facing because it means having a more democratic and more legitimate political system”.
We will see how the citizens interpret it and what their option is, ‘I approve’ or ‘I reject’, in the plebiscite on September 4. Engines are warming up.
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