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'; var inline_cta_text_425253 = ''; Following massive street protests, the Chilean people voted to draft a new constitution. How is it possible that in October 2020, almost 80 percent of Chileans expressed their support for a new Constitution, drafted by citizens specifically elected to write itbut after a year of concerted effort to arrive at a modern charter, 62 percent of voters rejected it in a referendum held earlier this month? Click here to log inor subscribe. Voters were also torn over a proposal to replace the Senate, the upper house of the bicameral Congress, with a so-called Chamber of Regions. He will reorder his cabinet corresponding to the trajectory toward the center that weve described, opening La Moneda Palace to the forces of the former Concertacin coalition, which could further strain his alliance with the Communist Party. For example, it was possible to introduce any proposal supported with a certain number of signatures. When we went around the country speaking, we could see that people didn't know enough about basic concepts like what a constitution can and can't do. View our current issue SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) Chileans resoundingly rejected a new constitution to replace a charter imposed by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet 41 years ago, dealing a stinging setback. A part of the (draft) constitution is very millennial, and those millennial values are not what the more traditional part (of society) wants, said sociologist Marta Lagos. People who rejected the new constitution draft protest against the government of Gabriel Boric a day after the vote in front of La Moneda Palace in . Its up to the congress, which is mostly under the control of the opposition, the political right wing. } Approving would have meant abandoning the 1980 constitution born under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and having a new political pact that reads in its first article: "Chile is a social and democratic constitutional state. While polling had long suggested Chileans would reject the new constitution, most want to replace the. Lazar Radic. Practically everyone who had to vote did so, said Moreno. Fund and provide widespread civic education. inline_cta_button_text_425253 = ''; var cta_1_check_425253 = false; Although 78% of voters approved changing the constitution in a referendum in 2020, the plebiscite in . Mon Sep 5, 2022 - 12:38 pm EDT. Patricio FernndezTwitterPatricio Fernndez Chadwick is the founder and former editor of The Clinic and was a member of the constituent assembly charged with drafting a new constitution for Chile. I would have chosen mandatory participation from the beginning, but its not good to switch in the middle. On Sunday, a resounding 62% of the voters in Chile, my country, rejected the adoption of a new and progressive Magna Carta; leaving in place, for now, the fraudulent constitution imposed by . The official promotion of the proposed constitution started in July, but the more conservative wing of our politics started talking about it on social media and on TV about a year before, when not even one article had been approved yet. Reuters described it as being one of the world's most progressive charters. For Reprints and Permissions, click here. In October 2020 78% of voters approved setting up a commission to re-write the constitution. In this constitution, there isn't balance. Chile is Latin America's most prosperous country, but too many people have been shut out of that prosperity. But we were coming from a breakdown in society which showed just how deep the cracks were; cracks which became open wounds within the Convention itself. It was defeated by a . Originally published in Spanish by Nueva Sociedad. A year ago, no one had even thought of changing Chile's constitution. Tim Padgett is the Americas editor for Miami NPR affiliate WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida. So, then a vote was organized to choose the district representatives who would write the new constitution. We still don't know what's going to happen with that. Through a multimillion-dollar campaign on social media, and using their near monopoly of the media, they advanced nonsense along the following lines: The citizen will be obligated to seek treatment in an overwhelmed public health system; Freedom of education will be suppressed; State benefits will drive workers to opt for unemployment; Housing will be expropriated and private property will be abolished; The principle of equality before the law will be erased to favor Indigenous and homosexual people, among other minorities; Religious freedom will be done away with and evangelical communities will be persecuted; Abortion will be allowed at whatever stage of pregnancy; All border controls will be lifted; The law will protect criminals over victims; The savings of workers will be confiscated and inheritances blocked; The name of the country and its national emblems will be changed; to just name a few of the declarations that appeared on basic television. In 2019, millions of Chileans poured into the streets to demand more of a say in their government. But the energy of October still seemed present enough to possibly prevail in the Constitutional Convention, with gender parity, seats reserved for Indigenous peoples, independent representatives, and the presence of the feminist and social movements. There is no telling whether the latest effort will end well either, but I am certain that Chile will learn from this setbackinstead of denying it and insisting on starting over again from scratch. The proposed charter is. magazine_text_425253 = 'Subscribe today and Save up to $129.
'; Now . The convention was packed with people pushing a certain agenda, like water, social security, etc., and they answered mainly to the people who voted for them. But this is definitely a setback for the Chilean and Latin American left. On September 4, faced with the results of the plebiscite, the command of the Movimientos Sociales por el Apruebo concluded: It is essential that the segments we organized to make possible this process also assume the task that remains laid out for us. In October 2020, almost 80% of Chileans voted in favour of a new constitution. In July 2022 the final draft was released. I think there were at least three big issues: the quality of information provided, the process itself, and the popularity of President Gabriel Boric. Please become a member today. She still does not understand why in this commune - as in the rest of the country - people chose to reject the proposed new constitution on 4 September. That was not in any analysis., Read all the Latest Explainers News and Breaking News here. I came to this task full of hope. Detractors feared this could weaken the oppositions veto powers, leaving too much power in the hands of the president. Only a few hours after polling closed, it was clear who had won. Given that all the texts had to be approved by two-thirds of the Assembly, none of these extreme positions were included in them. Well, there is what I would like to happen and what I think will really happen. The president was one of the main people who promoted the agreement that led to the drafting of a new constitution. President Boric has suggested they will. But Chile's voters rejected the proposal by a 24-point margin. Donate now. Why did so many Chileans say they wanted a new constitution? cta_1_check_425253 = true; } A Time Warner Company. if( magazine_button_bg_color_425253 !='' ){ Use of the CNN name and/or logo on or as part of NEWS18.com does not derogate from the intellectual property rights of Cable News Network in respect of them. On that date, those who wanted a new constitution suggested that the ghost of Pinochet who overthrew Allende in a violent coup in 1973 would be exorcised. And it would have been very helpful to the members of the convention to know how people were reacting to what was happening on the inside. That's of course a common story across Latin America. Thank you. We went to rural areas, for example, so we could talk to people and inform them how the proposals would impact them. They didnt have the budget for it. While polling had long suggested Chileans would reject the new constitution, most want to replace the. Felipe speaks about what an environmentally friendly constitution would look like. Why, then, did Chileans overwhelmingly reject it? Thats also why Im not sure it would have been a good idea to have implemented the random process used for a citizens assembly to convene the constitutional convention. We were a little bit surprised by the proposed constitution; we got more of what we wanted than we ever thought possible. After 6 PM, [], A journal of theory and strategy published by Jacobin, Why Chileans Rejected the Proposed New Constitution, When the Mob Tried to Whack Dennis Kucinich, Chiles New Constitution Could Guarantee Neoliberalism Dies Where It Was Born, Chiles Social Movements and Organized Labor Are Central to the Fight to Transform Society, Gabriel Boric: Democracy Is Built by All of Us Together, Communist Mayor Daniel Jadue: Gabriel Boric Is the President Chile Needs. Every big media platform has its own editorial line, and they communicated what they wanted to. } All rights reserved. The possibility of a new constitution was the response of some politicians to the situation. So, right now, the political-right parties are feeling very empowered. jQuery("#magazine_button_425253").html(magazine_button_text_425253); The second was the election of members of the constitutional convention. var inline_cta_button_text_425253 = ''; I do believe that participation in the constitutional process needs to be improved to facilitate access of the people to information and allow them to present their ideas and learn what happens to them. You can read our Privacy Policy here. They feel the rejection of the proposal is support for the rightwing parties, although I don't think it is. inline_cta_font_color_425253 = '#000000'; Well, not according to polls we've been watching all year, which forecast the no vote winning this referendum and in the end, 62% did vote against it. All this might have been overcome if there had been a greater will to come together within the Convention so that all of these episodes could have been considered just isolated incidents. So what happens now and where does this leave the leftist wave we've seen recently in Latin American politics? VIDEO: People in Denmark Are a Lot Happier Than People in the United States. The segment of the working class that, despite everything explained above, voted Apruebo as resolutely in the September 4 plebiscite as it did in that of 2020 today struggles with a feeling of catastrophe through which it can imagine a profound, antagonistic dilemma with the neoliberal Chilean model. (Photo by Fernando Lavoz / NurPhoto / Getty Images). In the wake of the. It would have replaced the old one written four decades ago under the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. In a referendum, almost 62% voted against the . Right now, the president doesn't have much power over the constitutional process. In the north, Apruebo didnt reach 35 percent, and in the Araucana region, where most Mapuche Indigenous communities live, rejection reached 74 percent. inline_cta_button_text_425253 = ''; jQuery("#inline_cta_btn_425253 a input").css("background",inline_cta_bg_color_425253); After Sundays blow, Boric said he would shuffle his government team and host political talks on how best to restart the drafting process. Last Updated: September 06, 2022, 21:16 IST, Supporters of the new Constitution embrace as they listen to the partial results of a plebiscite on whether the new Constitution will replace the current Magna Carta imposed by a military dictatorship 41 years ago, in Santiago, Chile (Image: Reuters). Last year, Chileans elected an assembly to write a new constitution, and more than two-thirds of its members were from the political left. Together with the definition of Chile as plurinational, the article recognized collective rights for Indigenous peoples and would have installed an Indigenous justice system. Journalists covered the growing target of organized crime and drug trafficking profusely, associating it with the shocking situations of migrants in the north of the country. In order to comment, you must be logged in as a paid subscriber. jQuery("#inline_cta_425253").html(inline_cta_text_425253); Clearly, the maturation of this antagonism wont find support in the current government. if( inline_cta_url_425253 !='' ){ But as you point out, two years ago, 80% of Chilean voters said they wanted a new and especially a more democratic constitution. freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ "One of the problems was that the compulsory vote was only at the final stage, meaning that a large number of people who were disconnected throughout the process were forced to vote for a constitution they . Get our print magazine for just $20 a year. This past Sunday, Chileans including ex-pats here in South Florida rejected the draft of a new constitution. The neoliberal elite has made various attempts to patch up fissures in the neoliberal model and remedy the political systems crisis of legitimacy, which nearly led to the removal of multimillionaire president Sebastin Piera. Around 80% of voters said yes to a new constitution, and they chose the 100% popular-election approach. Heres what she had to say about the draft constitution: I rejected it. In fact, you were fined if you didn't vote. The new issue of Jacobin is out now. But this shows Latin America's leftists the limits of that wave. To be approved, it needs to be + moderate and to reflect the . Voters in Chile have overwhelmingly rejected a new constitution which was due to replace the one drawn up under Gen Augusto Pinochet's military rule. Earlier, the powerful results of the 2020 plebiscite had indicated broad possibilities for sociopolitical transformation (78 percent of voters approved the idea of a new charter to lay to rest the 1980 constitution), despite the intrinsic limits of an assembly that was convened, in part, by the old parties of Congress. Chile voted overwhelmingly against a new, progressive constitution on Sunday. So, a process with massive participation was desired. Chileans disagreed: 86 percent of eligible voters showed up and, by a margin of nearly two to one, rejected the convention's vision of a new Chile. You may unsubscribe or adjust your preferences at any time. How this will unfold is still unclear, but President Boric has now handed Congress the job of finding the way. Chileans Reject Proposed Constitution On Sunday, Chileans overwhelmingly rejected a new proposed . magazine_button_url_425253 = 'https://www.thenation.com/email-signup-module-donate/'; They are not impartial, but they make it look like they are. Are we left instead with the consolidation of the Pinochet Constitution of 1980? Later, when we had the actual proposal for the new constitution, we saw that a lot of what we were advocating for was included! if( inline_cta_button_text_425253 !='' ){ Chilean voters have overwhelmingly rejected a new constitution hailed one of the most democratic documents in the world which was meant to have ushered them into a new progressive age, as opposed to the present charter Magna Carta which is a remnant from the socially regressive and politically . And that clamor was supposedly tied to the re-emergence of the left we've seen recently in Latin America. The government of Gabriel Boric, which was totally committed to the process, is another of the big losers. Translated by Liza Schmidt. This past Sunday, Chileans including ex-pats here in South Florida rejected the draft of a new constitution. Supporters of a proposed new constitution for Chile suffered a big defeat in a plebiscite on Sunday, Sept. 4. . Chileans categorically reject a new, progressive constitution. Santiago, Chile (Map) On Sunday, voters in Chile turned out in great numbers to decide whether the country should create a new constitution. From the very outset, the media and social networks concentrated almost exclusively on scenes and statements designed to discredit the framers: people voting barefoot, speeches delivered to guitar accompaniment, a woman with breast cancer taking the floor to show her post-operative breasts, a Trotskyite proposing to do away with the separation of powers, ecologists who wanted the Constitution to recognize the importance of mushrooms. The leftist wave we 've seen recently in Latin American left constitution: I rejected it progressive laws. They communicated what they wanted to. reject the new constitution, and communicated... Of what we wanted than we ever thought possible Chileans overwhelmingly rejected a new constitution for Chile suffered a defeat... Is still unclear, but too many people have been seen as too. 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