2023-05-04 18:39:50
First modification:
In Chile, the campaign for the election of constitutional councilors comes to an end on May 4. For the second time in three years, the country will draw up a new Constitution, after the rejection eight months ago of the one drawn up by a Constituent Convention. More than 15 million people are called to the polls on Sunday May 7 and must elect 50 councilors in charge of continuing the drafting of the new text.
With the RFI correspondent in Santiago de Chile, Naïla Derroisné
Traditionally, during elections, the streets of the capital are filled with promotional posters showing the faces of the candidates. This time there is barely. The electoral environment has not just taken off.
But some candidates continue to take to the streets to inform and convince. This is the case of Yerko Ljubetic, on the left of the political spectrum. He is handing out brochures in a market in a popular commune in the north of Santiago.
“Having a Constitution written in a democracy is a matter of minimal national dignity. I am ashamed that we have the same Constitution approved in a dictatorship. The new Constitution must take care of what is essential that the social crisis implies, which is the demand for social rights We have an opportunity to resolve this crisis politically”, explains Yerko Ljubetic.
Now it is the political parties that lead the way, unlike the previous process, in which many members came from civil society. And according to Yerko, this new dynamic is not liked by everyone: “It appears as an agreement between the parties, as well as from one day to the next. The deadlines are super short. That everything is cooked is an idea that actually spread,” he says .
a complicated process
Without much enthusiasm, the candidate chats and shakes a few hands, also greets a young woman and hands her a brochure. At her stall, 24-year-old Paula sells Buddha figurines and incense.
“Chile has the opportunity to write a new Constitution based on the needs of this time. We can write as a rule that in Chile health is like this, that water is not privatized, so to speak. I find that it is super important because many laws , many projects, have not been able to emerge due to this, because it is unconstitutional,” says the young woman.
Although she is enthusiastic about the idea of a new Constitution, Paula acknowledges that this second process is not easy to understand: “What they show you in the electoral strip is super entangled. It does not tell you, for example, that there are five alliances, they do not explain that there are these candidates. I feel that the information was still very entangled for me. So what will it be like for those who find it much more difficult to understand? “, he expresses.
According to a survey carried out a month before the vote, half of the population said they were not interested in the elections. “The issues that concern citizens the most are those that have to do with crime, immigration, internal security, inflation. Constitutional issues do not appear, and therefore, there is no expectation. The common citizen’s feeling is why do we have a new constituent process? Why don’t we dedicate resources to other issues that are more urgent? That’s what an ordinary citizen thinks today,” says Octavio Avendaño, a sociologist at the University of Chile.
This notorious lack of interest is also very strong among the almost five million Chileans who, eight months ago, voted in favor of the first text drafted by the Constituent Convention.
“For an important part of the citizenry and for the political sector of the world on the left, the process failed on September 4, and what we are experiencing today is a completely different process that is in the hands of the elites and the political parties. That is the vision of the citizens mobilized from the social outbreak,” adds Avendaño.
According to the academic, right-wing and far-right parties could win a majority of seats if turnout is high, and it likely is, since voting is compulsory.
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