Ballots inside one of the ballot boxes at the electoral college installed in September 2022 at the National Stadium, in Santiago.sofia yanjari
Three months after the constitutional plebiscite on September 4 in Chile, in which 62% of the voters rejected the proposal drawn up by a 155-member convention, the Chilean political forces are carrying out the last stage of the negotiations for an agreement for a new constituent process.
President Gabriel Boric, whose government was about to approve the proposal, reiterated this Tuesday his call to end the talks this week.
He has done so despite La Moneda's initial decision to distance itself from this process and leave it in the hands of both the ruling and opposition political parties, precisely to facilitate negotiations.
The right-wing National Renewal party, along the same lines, has stated that it expects white smoke to rise in the next few hours,
Today the 1980 Constitution governs Chile. Drafted during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, it was reformulated dozens of times in democracy, for which reason it bears the signature of President Ricardo Lagos, who led important transformations of the text in 2005. In the midst of the In the social outbreak of October 2019, the constituent process was the response that the political world as a whole offered to citizens to decompress the revolts that called into question Chilean democracy.
In July 2021, a convention dominated by the left and the independents began its functions and, after a year of work, delivered a very transformative text of the Chilean institutionality, with a marked feminist and environmental accent, defended by the recently assumed government. Boric.
In the exit referendum last September,
however, the electorate widely rejected it, which strengthened the right and the groups that opposed the text, such as the center-left Amarillos.
Since then, the political groups represented in Congress have tried to reach an agreement to set the rules for this new constituent attempt, which will not be the same as the previous process.
Negotiations are in their final third.
In a first stage, the political groups agreed on 12 points that must be respected when drafting a new proposal for a Constitution, to avoid, in short, the text having a refoundational character.
Among these common minimums is that Chile continues to be a unitary State, for example.
In a second stage, it was agreed to have a joint body of 14 members, which would allow the future convention to settle its differences, especially in line with respecting the 12 bases that will mark the debates.
"We are therefore entering the most complex stage: the integration of the body that will draft the new Constitution, its number of members, and the way in which it will be elected," explains constitutionalist Tomás Jordán,
who coordinated the work for a new Constitution in the second Government of Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018).
"Initially everyone agreed on a new 100% elected body, but in recent weeks other proposals appeared that arranged the discussion in another direction," explains the academic from the Alberto Hurtado University.
Currently, the National Renewal initiative generates adhesions: the installation of a mixed body, made up of 50 elected people and 50 experts nominated by Congress in proportion to their forces.
Meanwhile, Boric's government and the left wing of the ruling party advocate that it be a fully elected convention and that it does not include members appointed by Congress, as the opposition grouped in Chile Vamos and to which Democratic Socialism, which is part of the Executive, I would be available.
“We have indicated that for us it is important that this process has citizen legitimacy and that requires that the constituents be elected, so we have raised it.
From the opposition they have been with different positions, but it does not matter.
The important thing is that we reach an agreement," the president assured on Saturday, based on what was discussed with a right-wing leader, the president of the UDI, Javier Macaya, who would have been available for a 100% elected body,
in exchange for the proposed text being ratified later by Parliament.
This Tuesday, meanwhile, Boric intervened to speed up the talks: "It is important that the political parties reach an agreement soon, this week, regarding the constituent process so that we have a new Fundamental Charter that grants stability and a new social pact to our country, and that it is legitimate in the eyes of the citizenry," said the left-wing president.
The form of election of the members of the body that will draw up the new Constitution proposal has been another of the great knots of this last stage of the negotiations.
According to the constitutionalist Jordán, there are at least two alternatives under discussion: that they be chosen based on regional lists, equivalent to the way in which the Senate is chosen, and that they be appointed in proportion to the political forces of Congress.
According to the academic, the result of the plebiscite left the ruling party of the left and center-left electorally weakened, because on September 4 the right was left with the victory and because, if the election of conventionalists were carried out promptly, both the Partido de la Gente and the Partido de la Gente The Republican Party – populists and the extreme right, respectively – could end up benefiting.
There have been pro-government voices that have pointed out that "the constituent moment was passed", in relation to the fact that the new Constitution does not appear among the citizen's priorities, such as crime control or the improvement of pensions.
64% of the people, however, agree with the need for a new Constitution, according to the Cadem survey.
According to the same poll, 53% would like the experts to be chosen in elections (not appointed), for the body to be made up of 100 constituents –not 155, like the previous convention–, and for it to last for only six months.
Furthermore, 71% of those surveyed think that it is unlikely or not at all likely that a political agreement will be reached for a new constituent path.
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