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A year after the huge protest, Chile is voting to repeal Pinochet's constitution

Polls predict strong support for drafting a new constitution, which will replace the one that protesters say benefits the rich.

Voting is under Corona restrictions, which have hit the country hard.

The new constitution will stand for another referendum in 2022, and opponents warn of a breach of stability.

"Leave the shadow of the dictatorship behind"

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• Chile

• Augusto Pinochet

News agencies

Sunday, 25 October 2020, 12:46

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Photo: Reuters

Citizens of Chile will vote today (Sunday) in a referendum on changing the constitution, which was one of the main demands of protesters last year.

The outcry against the inequality and elite in one of the most developed economies in Latin America erupted last fall, and it resumed with the easing of the closure imposed to curb the corona plague.

The polls will open at 8:00 a.m. local time, and will close 12 hours later, two hours longer than usual due to the desire to avoid crowds during the Corona epidemic.

Citizens will decide whether to support or oppose a new constitution, and whether it should be drafted by a specially elected civic body of 150 members, to be divided equally between women and men, and to include representatives from indigenous communities, or by a body that includes both citizens and legislators.

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Half a million were infected in Corona.

Polling in Santiago, yesterday (Photo: AP)

According to the polls, support for the replacement of the constitution formulated in the days of dictator Augusto Pinochet will win a large majority.

All eligible voters in a country of 18 million residents head to vote, but voting is not mandatory.

Authorities have warned that corona patients caught at the polls risk arrest and prosecution.

Checkpoints have been set up at least 20 meters from the entrance to the polls, where officials will make sure voters are not on the list of debtors in isolation.

"The right to vote of a sick person jeopardizes the right to health of thousands of people," Attorney General Jorge Abbott said in an email he sent to law enforcement officials.

Soldiers, who have become a routine sight on the streets of Chile since declaring a state of emergency during last year’s riots and once again after the outbreak of the corona in March, will monitor the vote from within, with police deployed outside the polls.

Require change.

A huge demonstration in Santiago last year (Photo: Reuters)

Opponents of the current constitution, drafted by Jaime Guzman, Pinochet's close adviser in 1980, argue that it benefits the richest in the country.

Since then it has only been changed to reduce the power of the military and the president.

"Chile is crucial", and "I want peace so I vote against" are some of the graffiti spray-painted in central Santiago, a year after about a million people took to the city streets in the biggest social uprising in Chilean history.

Thirty people were killed and thousands injured in the riots, until right-wing President Sebastian Pineira agreed to hold a referendum on a new constitution.

Blue copies of the constitution were sold in the city center as souvenirs.

"You will learn how they privatized our water," shouted one of the sellers at a street stall.

The demonstrations originally began in protest of rising public transport prices, and have since expanded into demonstrations against the social and economic inequality in the health, education and pension systems that remained from Pinochet's reign between 1973 and 1990.

Another referendum in two years

If there is indeed a majority to draft a new constitution, it will be put to another referendum in 2022.

"The first aim of this constitutional process is to leave behind the shadow of Pinochet's dictatorship," Marcello Mela, a political science expert at the University of Santiago, told AFP.

"This is to formulate a new constitution without the original sin in which it was made under the use of force."

According to him, the additional goal is to "solve through political and non-violent means structural problems in the functioning of Chile's democracy", such as inequality and social discrimination.

Opponents of the constitutional amendment, including conservative MPs, warn that the procedure could hurt decades of economic stability and deter foreign investors, given the violence that took place during the demonstrations.

The turnout in the referendum is difficult to predict, given the severe outbreak of the corona in Chile, with more than half a million infected and close to 14,000 dead.

The polls have been purified.

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