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Chile heads to replace Pinochet's Constitution with high turnout in referendum

2020-10-25T21:11:52.028Z


Electoral authorities anticipate that turnout at the polls may be the highest since 2012, when voluntary voting began to rule


Dozens of people line up outside a polling station in Chile this Sunday, October 25.JAVIER TORRES / AFP

The images seen in the streets, social networks and the media show long waits to enter the polling stations in Chile and abroad, where 14.7 million citizens are summoned to participate in a historic day of plebiscite.

This Sunday, Chileans decide whether to replace the current Constitution of 1980, drawn up during the dictatorship, which has undergone 53 modifications.

The referendum is held in the first wave of the covid-19 still active - there are 9,748 patients, who cannot vote - and with a detailed health protocol, so voters have attended the 2,715 available locations following the recommendations.

Neither the pandemic nor the violence of a week ago seem to have slowed down participation, so Chile's regional abstention records could be reversed, which will not be known until tonight.

The previous polls anticipate between 70% and 85% of the votes for the option in favor of changing the Constitution.

"It will be the largest participation process since 2012, when voluntary voting was established," said Patricio Santamaría, president of the Electoral Service (SERVEL) this afternoon.

“Seeing the commitment, the constitution of the polling stations, the influx of voters, it gives us the impression that we are going to overcome the highest vote in the last eight years, which was the one that elected President [Sebastián] Piñera with 49.2 % in 2017 ”, he added.

The sunny and spring weather in Santiago has been able to help participation.

Electoral participation in Chile has declined steadily since the first presidential and parliamentary elections within the framework of the return to democracy, according to data from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

The trend increased in 2012, when voluntary voting began to rule.

Participation has fallen from 87% in 1989 to 50% in the second presidential round of 2017 with a record low of 36% in the 2016 municipal elections. According to the UNDP, Chile also stands out for its low electoral participation compared to other countries of the region and the OECD, and even if it is compared with the average participation in countries with voluntary voting (59%).

According to the Undersecretary of the Interior, Juan Francisco Galli, "there has been no incident that puts the election process at risk."

Until this afternoon, the carabinieri has arrested 30 people.

Two were arrested for being in a voting center with diagnosed covid-19, while another four were close contacts of the infected.

Voting with protocols

There is an eagerness to participate in a historic electoral process that seeks to channel social unrest.

People respect social distance in the long lines that form outside the polling stations and everyone wears their mask and alcohol gel.

It has been a fast and orderly process, where the deployment of good logistics due to the health crisis is observed.

What happens this Sunday with respect to the pandemic will be key with a view to the electoral train that Chile will face between 2021 and 2022.

The tables began to be set up early —at eight in the morning in Chile— and after four hours they were fully set up, according to SERVEL.

Due to the health crisis, the hours have been extended and they will operate for 12 hours, until eight at night.

Between two and five in the afternoon, the premises have exclusively received older adults, at risk from covid-19.

In the morning, however, this group of the population went en masse to the polls, as is the custom.

On local television they showed a 76-year-old Chilean, Rosa, who was leaving her home for the first time since March, when the pandemic exploded.

As she suffers from hypertension and diabetes, she was wearing a plastic suit to avoid contagion.

Many young people also came to cast their vote early.

They are the ones that make up the majority of the electoral roll: 57.9% were not old enough to vote in the 1988 referendum, on the continuity of Augusto Pinochet, or had not even been born at that time.

If they finally go to the polls en masse, they could reverse an eventual decline among older adults.

In the last presidential and parliamentary elections of 2017, the group that participated the least was those between 18 and 24 years old (35%), followed by those between 25 and 34 years old (36%).

President Sebastián Piñera has voted early in a local in the municipality of Las Condes, in the east of the capital.

"The vast majority want to change, modify our Constitution," said the president, who broke with the tradition of the rulers to vote in the center of Santiago.

“I want to ask all my compatriots to come and vote all, all voices matter.

That they do it peacefully and taking care of their health and that we respect the result.

That we all play for unity and not division, for peace and not violence, "said Piñera, who has not expressed his option before this referendum and has pushed his government to do the same, although it is known that his ministers they are divided over this process.

The same as the right, where there are supporters of maintaining and changing the fundamental letter.

Two ballots must be marked in the plebiscite.

One to decide whether to approve or reject the idea of ​​changing the current Constitution of 1980. For the first time in the world, citizens will be asked, at the same time, by the body that will draft it: if a constitutional convention composed of 155 citizens specially elected for this purpose or a mixed convention of 172 members, composed in equal parts by parliamentarians (50% and 50%).

The 86 congressmen who participate in this body, if they win this option, will dedicate themselves fully to writing the new fundamental letter.

If the alternative of those who want to replace the Constitution wins, there would be another peculiarity: the convention elected on April 11 will be joint, that is, composed in equal numbers by men and women.

Former President Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) referred to this issue, voting: “We are facing the possibility of drafting the Constitution that we want.

For the first time, women will be on an equal footing in the constitutional convention and, what seems most important to me, is that young people are participating ”, added the former socialist president.

For the best positioned leader of the opposition with a view to the 2021 presidential elections, Daniel Jadue, mayor of the Recoleta municipality of the capital, this Sunday "is a historic day, which arrives for Chileans 30 years behind."

Jadue is a member of the Communist Party, a group that did not join the agreement of all the political forces in Congress last November to make a new Constitution possible.

It was the institutional solution to a crisis that had Chilean democracy on the ropes, after the social upheavals that broke out in October 2019.

Chileans have also voted from outside the country.

In New Zealand, where due to the time change the tables have already been closed, the option of those who approve of changing the Constitution with 93% of the votes has won.

858 votes were registered, while in the second presidential round of 2017 there were only 121 votes.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-10-25

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