Chile opened this week the last chapter of its constituent process with the presentation of the draft of the new Constitution and the subsequent delivery of the text to the Harmonization Commission, a body that began this Tuesday the last corrections of what would be the new Magna Carta of the country.
(Also read: Chile: the key points of the draft of the new Constitution)
After ten months of work, the Constitutional Convention delivered the draft —consisting of 499 articles— in an emotional ceremony at the Huancacha Ruins monument, in Antofagasta, as a symbol of the country’s desire for decentralization that the new law includes.
“With these rules and articles we begin to build a fairer Chile”, said the president of the Convention, María Elisa Quinteros, at the ceremony.
(You may be interested in: ‘Menstruating person’: controversy over law in Chile that does not say ‘woman’)
The writing of this text was the political solution that Chile found to appease the violent protests that broke out in October 2019 demanding greater social justice in a very unequal country, in which only in 2021 the wealth of the richest Chileans represented 16 .1 percent of GDP, according to estimates by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
Thus, the objective of a large number of constituents was to increase social rights with respect to the current Magna Carta – of a marked neoliberal nature and inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) -.
The turning point, according to experts, is the definition of Chile as a “social state of law”, thus ending four decades of the so-called “subsidiary state”.
The draft also puts an end to the privatization of basic services: it ends the water market, proposes a universal health system and strengthens public, secular and free education at all levels.
There is also talk of gender co-responsibility, the protection of the environment or increasing the rights of indigenous peoples, who until now had not been included in any constitutional process.
On the other hand, it creates the Chamber of the Regions, a body that will replace the current Senate, perhaps one of the most controversial initiatives of the draft.
(Also: Chile: the controversial proposal to replace the Senate with the Regional Chamber)
The text is a bad proposal for a Constitution and its provisions will do irreparable damage to the country
For the constituents, the text consecrates a “new catalog of social rights” and recognizes historically excluded sectors.
The socialist Pedro Muñoz affirmed, for example, that “the vast majority of Chileans will feel reflected in the text because for the first time it has been constituted in a democratic, broad and plural manner.”
However, the draft does not generate devotion among conservative constituents, who describe it as “partisan” and “indigenist” and call directly to reject it in the plebiscite on September 4.
“The elaboration of a proposal that unites and does not segregate remains pending,” affirmed the conservative Marcela Cubillos, former Minister of the Environment.
This Tuesday, the Republican Party of Chile became one of the first to express its formal rejection of the draft, stating that “the text is a bad proposal for a Constitution and its provisions will do it irreparable damage” to the country.
(You can read: Constituent in Chile, in the final stretch: the draft is ready)
As quoted by the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, the party affirmed that the Convention “failed in its mission of drafting a Constitution that represents Chileans and establishes the foundations for future development.”
And the alarms are also on within the government of Gabriel Boric, given the increase in social rejection of the text. The Citizen Pulse survey revealed that 42.7 percent of the population would vote against, while 27.8 percent would be in favor. It was in March when, for the first time, the results turned towards the rejection of the new letter.
Now, the Commission will have until June 9 to make changes in terms of grammar or legal coherence and to eliminate repetitions, but it will not be able to alter the basic content of the articles already approved.
In parallel, two other commissions will work: the Preamble, in charge of preparing the text that opens the Magna Carta, and the Transitory Norms, in charge of the articles that will regulate the transition of the Constitution.
*With information from AFP and EFE.
More news
How much is the plane that the Colombian government would buy from Ecuador worth?
Ecuador, involved in a spiral of social violence
Paraguay, the mirror of the criminal crisis in Latin America
#keys #draft #constitution #Chile