The Chileans finally voted against the draft new Constitution with a large majority.
More than 60% of the 15 million voters called to vote on Sunday September 4 chose the “
rechazo
”, the no to a text drafted by a constitutional convention which they had elected a little over a year ago.
The consultation had a very symbolic aspect.
If approved, the new supreme text would have replaced the Constitution drafted in 1980 during the Pinochet dictatorship.
But this Constitution
"had been revised 58 times since 1990",
specifies Stéphanie Alenda, sociologist and director of research at the Andres Bello University of Santiago de Chile.
“
In Chile, we must resolve our differences with more democracy, never with less.
I am very proud that we have come this far
,” President Gabriel Boric tweeted.
Former President Michelle Bachelet, who has just left her post as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, said that if the new Constitution is rejected, “
the demands of Chileans will remain unsatisfied
”.
The new text was drafted by members of the Convention who are very committed to ecology, women's rights and the rights of indigenous peoples.
If corresponded to the state of mind at the end of the serious crisis that the country experienced in 2019, the Chile of today, if it is still in demand for change, is more peaceful and has regained its caution.
The Chileans ended up being afraid of a change that they themselves initiated.
One of the most controversial points of the new text was the right to abortion.
Chile is very influenced by a very conservative Catholic Church on the subject.
If the text had been adopted, Chile would have been one of the first countries to enshrine the right to abortion in the constitution.
abortion does not
“Plurinational Chile”
Moreover, the text recognized nature in its own right by giving it rights.
For public opinion, this went too far.
“
Indigenism was central in the text,
according to Stéphanie Alenda
.
The Chileans did not recognize themselves in the plurinational Chile of the new Constitution.
They agree to recognize indigenous peoples and their representatives in Parliament, but within the framework of a multicultural and non-multinational State.
The Mapuches themselves were not in favor of this idea.
The consultation also took place in a context of renewed violence by Mapuche armed groups in the south of the country.
It is above all the north and the south of the country which spoke out against the Constitution, unlike the central region.
But the victory of the no does not mean the end of all reform.
For months, the yes camp had been preparing for a defeat to the point of planning even before the vote a series of reforms to be made within the framework of the current Constitution to build a new social state.
President Gabriel Boric, who claims to be on the left, announced that he would ask Parliament to launch a new constitutional process starting from “
zero
”.
According to him, the 2020 referendum, approved by 79% to end the 1980 Constitution, definitively buried the Constitution of the Pinochet era.
“
We will have a new constitution one way or another,
believes Stephanie Alenda
.
What remains to be defined is the mechanism.
Everyone agrees that we need a faster process.
The reforms must be made and they will be made
”.
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