2023-05-09 11:00:01
Chile’s opposition right-wing parties won the majority of the votes in Sunday’s election to appoint the drafters of a draft new constitution, a sharp turn from the overwhelming left-wing majority that crafted the first failed attempt to change the magna carta.
With 95.13% of the polling stations counted, the electoral authority Servel reported that the Republican Party, led by former hard-right presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, came first with 35.4% of the vote.
A coalition of parties from the traditional right and center right, for its part, obtained 21.1%, while the bloc of leftist parties in the government of Gabriel Boric won 28.4% of the vote. Another bloc of center-left parties got 9%.
The Servel did not immediately report how many writers each party had chosen.
The new Constitutional Council will have 50 members and the articles will need a three-fifths majority to be approved and included in the proposal, which will be submitted to a plebiscite on December 17. In the first process, a more robust majority of two-thirds of the votes was required for the approval of the standards.
NEW BEGINNING FOR CHILE
“We can breathe a little calmer and more relieved. Today is the first day of a better future, of a new beginning for Chile,” said Kast, who lost in the second round to Boric, in one of the first reactions after knowing the results.
“Chile has defeated a failed government,” he added.
In a statement shortly after from the La Moneda presidential palace, Boric recognized the triumph of the opposition right and said that “the previous process failed, among other things, because we did not know how to listen to each other among those who thought differently.”
“I want to invite the Republican Party, which has obtained an unquestionable first majority, to not make the same mistake that we made,” Boric insisted. “This process cannot be one of ‘vendettas’, but of putting Chile ahead.”
Sunday’s election is the most recent step in a process that began at the end of 2019, after a period of intense street protests, which seeks to draft a new Constitution to replace the current one, which dates from the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. .
Almost 80% of Chileans voted in 2020 to draft a new magna carta, but the process that was opened from that vote failed in September of last year when almost 63% of voters, in elections of historic participation, rejected the proposal.
FAILURE OF THE FIRST ATTEMPT
That first bill was drafted by largely independent and left-wing constituents and focused on broad social benefits, environmental rights, gender parity and indigenous rights, among other issues.
President Boric, who took office in March last year, came to power on a wave of optimism about reform, but his approval ratings have since plunged as the economy slowed, inflation rose and the advance of crime have become the main concerns of voters.
The failure of the first attempt also meant a heavy political defeat for Boric and his government, who saw him as key to promoting reforms.
The constitutional drafters who are chosen will begin their work in June on the basis of a draft prepared since March by 24 experts appointed by Congress.
By Alexander Villegas
Reuters Agency
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