The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, appealed this Saturday for unity two weeks before Chileans approve or reject the proposal for a new Constitution at the polls in one of the most crucial and polarized votes since the end of the dictatorship.
“The commitment of the liberator Bernardo O’Higgins to work tirelessly for the country, for the unity of the country, is something that in these moments where there is division, we have to rescue,” assured the president in the south, in the commemoration of the birth of the one who is considered one of the fathers of the country. “It is in the unity of Chile where the best of Chileans and Chileans and the best of our country comes out,” Boric added.
to the polls
More than 15 million Chileans are called to the polls on September 4 to decide whether they want to approve the new Constitution or maintain the current one, inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and partially reformed in democracy. The latest polls published on Thursday, when the ban on disclosing polls began, revealed that the tendency to reject the text is maintained, with a difference of more than 10 points.
For the Citizen Pulse study, 45.8 percent would vote for “Rejection”, 32.9 “I Approve”, 15.7 are undecided and 2.5 would vote null or blank. For the Cadem pollster, 37 percent would vote “I approve”, 46 “Rejection” and 17 percent did not decide.
This time the vote is mandatoryunlike the plebiscite of October 2020, when it was voluntary and the option to write a new constitution won by almost 80 percent, with more than half of the electoral roll. Millions of voters have not gone to the polls since 2012, when the vote became voluntary.
grand bargain
The right would vote against finding the new text too radical, while the left is campaigning for “Approve”, although it has promised to reach a great pact to reform the most conflictive aspects, a negotiation led by Boric himself.
Before participating in O’Higgins’s birthday, the president gave an interview on Radio Macarena in Chillán, 370 kilometers from the capital, and reiterated his commitment to reforming the new text if it ends up being approved. “I am going to consider it from a position of humility. There cannot be winners and losers,” he assured.
The new norm declares Chile a social State of law, compared to the secondary State of the current text, and enshrines rights such as public and universal health, free education, better pensions and access to housing and water. The multinational character of the State, the presidential re-election, the justice system and the elimination of the Senate are some of the issues included in the text that generate the most rejection.