The result is final. Chileans overwhelmingly rejected on Sunday the proposal for a new Constitution which aimed to replace that inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), according to partial results relating to the counting of 88% of the ballots.
Some 62% of voters, or nearly 7 million people, slipped the ballot “I reject”, against 4.2 million (38%) in favor of the mention “I approve” during this compulsory referendum. This unambiguous choice suspends, at least temporarily, the process of a new Constitution started after the violent popular uprising of 2019 demanding more social justice.
Establish new social rights
A first referendum in October 2020 had however clearly called for the drafting of a new fundamental text (79%), the current Constitution then being considered as a brake on any substantive social reform. But the fruit of a year of work by the 154 members of a Constituent Assembly, elected in May 2021 to draft the proposal, has apparently shaken up the conservatism of a major part of Chilean society.
The new text wanted to establish a gallery of new social rights in an ultra-liberal society, with strong social inequalities, and intended to guarantee Chilean citizens the right to education, public health, retirement and housing. decent.
Tense debates around abortion
The inscription in stone of the right to abortion, a subject that is debated in the country where abortion has only been authorized since 2017 in the event of rape or danger for the mother or the child, or the recognition of new rights for indigenous peoples, has tensed the often heated debates in a campaign bathed in a climate of misinformation.
“It’s a defeat for the refoundation of Chile,” said Javier Macaya, president of the ultra-conservative UDI party. “We are going to continue with the will to continue the constituent process”, as the opposition had undertaken.
Left-wing President Gabriel Boric, elected in December 2021, for his part anticipated this setback and announced that he would ask Parliament to launch a new constitutional process starting from “zero”, with the election of a new constituent assembly to write a new text.