Chile: the ultra-right sweeps the constituent election and will draft a new Constitution

2023-05-08 12:01:00

SANTIAGO, Chile.- The ultra-conservative right prevailed comfortably yesterday in the election of council members who will draft a new Constitution proposal to replace the one inherited from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. “We once again have the opportunity to build with dialogue and I find a new Magna Carta”, said the president Gabriel Boric in a speech at the La Moneda presidential palace after the results were known.

With 99% of the votes counted, the Republican Partywho always opposed constitutional change, was the most voted of the day with 35% of the votes, said the local Electoral Service (Servel). The conservative advance increases if the vote obtained by the traditional right is added, of 21%, and 11 councillors. For his part, the left-wing coalition that supports Boric reached 29% of support and achieved 17 representatives.

A man votes at the former Mapocho train station, now a cultural center, during an election to choose members of a Constitutional Council that will draft a new constitution proposal in Santiago, Chile, Sunday, May 7, 2023. A The first attempt to replace the current statute bequeathed by the military 42 years ago was rejected by voters during a referendum in 2022. (AP Photo/Esteban Félix)

“This is much more than any forecast had expected”he told the agency AFP Claudia Heiss, head of the Political Science program at the University of Chile, on the representation achieved by the ultra-conservative right. After the rejection of a first text in September, promoted by the Government and its allies, Chileans leaned this time towards the conservative forces, in a new attempt to renew the constitutional bases after the violent social outbreak of 2019which revealed an unequal and fractured society.

With 22 councilors, the Republican Party, which opposes abortion and has a discourse against immigrants, “does not need to negotiate with anyone, they can write the Constitution they want” and “has the power to veto any modification,” Heiss added.

After knowing the electoral results, Boric invited the elected constituents to act “with wisdom and temperance” and asked them to avoid making the same mistakes that made the first attempt at constitutional change from a Constituent Assembly dominated at that time by the left fail. The draft of that new Constitution was rejected by 62% of the votes in a referendum held on September 4 of last year.

Analysts and politicians believe that the election would also be a virtual plebiscite to the management of President Boric, whose disapproval is close to 70%, according to polls. Meanwhile, the two political coalitions of the president, one from the left and the other from the center-left, aspired to obtain 21 seats to obtain veto power and force the opposition to negotiate the norms of the text.

Traditional parties of the Chilean left, such as the Radical Party, the Christian Democracy or the Party for Democracy – which dominated the political scene after the return to democracy after Pinochet (1973-1990) – were left out of the Council. The populist People’s Party also won no seats.

He new Constitutional Council They will have 50 members -25 women and 25 men- and the articles will need a three-fifths majority to be approved and included in the proposal, which will be submitted to a plebiscite in December. Once the organism is formed You will receive, for your review and adjustments, a project previously prepared by experts with 12 essential principles that cannot be modified, for example, the one that consecrates Chile as a market economy with state and private participation.

The constituent path was opened after the violent social outbreak of 2019, which was controlled by Congress with the call for a plebiscite in which 78% of the electorate voted in favor of a new Constitution.

However, Chilean voters seemed apathetic this time with the election of the Constitutional Council, whose members will draft the new proposed constitutional text, which is due to go to a plebiscite on December 17. With yesterday’s day Chileans have seven elections in three and a half years and this is the second convention they have elected in two years.

Chile’s President Gabriel Boric shows his ballot paper before casting his ballot during an election to elect members of a Constitutional Council that will draft a new constitution proposal, in Punta Arenas, Chile, Sunday, May 7, 2023.Andres Poblete – AP

In this election, the pact or party that obtains 30 of the 50 seats in the Constitutional Council will have in its hands the drafting of the new Constitution without having to negotiate with other forces, while the one that obtains 21 seats would have the power of veto and could pressure for the search for consensus.

Workers from Servel (Chile’s Electoral Service) help set up the polling stations for the election of the Constitutional Council that will draft a proposal for a new Constitution, at the National Stadium in Santiago, on May 6, 2023.MARTIN BERNETTI – AFP

Unlike the first constituent process, when the drafters of the text started from a blank sheet, The 50 advisors will work on a constitutional draft prepared by 24 experts appointed by the political parties.

Among the bases are those that establish that Chile is a unitary State, respect for rights such as life, property and equality before the law. The directors, who must be framed in the same bases, will have five months to prepare a new proposal.

Reuters and AP agencies

THE NATION

Conocé The Trust Project