Three months after the rejection of the new Chilean Constitution in a referendum, 14 parties with representation in Congress and three movements have reached an agreement to start a new constituent process.
They have sealed it from the Communist Party to the traditional right and it is a constituent route very different from the previous one, with rules that establish limits and that would prevent a refoundational proposal.
The agreement, released this Monday night at the headquarters of Parliament in the Chilean capital, contemplates the citizen election of the 50 people who must draft the text, a joint body called the constitutional council.
It is a triumph for Gabriel Boric, who pushed hard for a body with no designees, although, in general terms, the rules of this new constituent attempt have been set mainly by those who won the referendum on September 4: the traditional right and the moderate forces.
“The country demands certainties, healing wounds, rebuilding trust and, above all, carrying out a successful constituent process, so that the Constitution is a factor of unity.
But the task is just beginning.
We have to learn with great humility from the lessons of our history and not only those of the recent past", said tonight the president of the Senate, the socialist Álvaro Elizalde, detailing together with the leader of the Chamber of Deputies, Vlado Mirosevic, the document titled
Agreement by Chile.
The process will be marked by the existence of a group of 24 experts that will be chosen by Congress (12 appointed by senators and 12 by deputies), where Boric's ruling party does not have a majority.
They will be elected "in proportion to the representation of the different political forces."
This team of experts must present a preliminary draft for the constitutional council to begin work.
Then they will join the council, they will be able to speak in the sessions and, at the end of the process, they will have the option of "formulating proposals that improve the drafting and understanding of the text's standards."
In case of discrepancies, a mixed group of six conventional and six experts must reach consensus by three fifths.
This point has been a triumph for the right,
This agreement will have to be ratified by four sevenths by Congress, because it is a bill to reform the Fundamental Charter.
Chile's new constitutional attempt will have less time: the experts will start working in January, the 50 conventional ones will be elected in April with a mandatory vote and, after an installation on May 21, they will have five months to work, until October 21, when they deliver the final text.
At the end of the process, the proposal must be ratified through an exit plebiscite on November 26, 2023.
Chile is governed by the 1980 Constitution, drafted during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship and reformulated dozens of times in democracy.
In the midst of the social unrest of October 2019, the constituent process was the institutional response that the political world as a whole offered to citizens to decompress the riots 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 profoundly transformative text of Chilean institutions, with a marked feminist and environmental accent, defended by the recently assumed government. Boric.
In the exit plebiscite last September, however, the electorate widely rejected it, which strengthened the right and the groups that opposed the text.
Since then, the political groups represented in Congress had tried to reach an agreement to set the rules for this new constituent effort.
Since last September 4, when the exit referendum was held where the proposal was rejected, the different political forces have been negotiating the conditions of this new attempt.
Only a few sectors, such as José Antonio Kast's extreme right-wing Republican Party, have maintained the position that Chile does not need a new constitution.
Until today some important consensuses had been agreed, such as the installation of 12 points that must be respected when drafting a new proposal for a Constitution, to avoid that, in short, the text has a refoundational character.
It was a point that the right won.
Among these common minimums is that Chile continues to be a unitary State;
respect the patriotic emblems, national shield, anthem;
define that the Chilean State has three separate and independent powers (which was in question in the previous proposal, especially due to the transformations in the Executive Branch);
and, among others, consecrate the autonomy of the Central Bank, Electoral Justice, Public Ministry and Comptroller's Office.
In a second stage, the existence of a body of 14 members, all jurists, was agreed to allow the future convention to settle their differences, especially in line with respecting the 12 bases that will mark the debates.
Their role has become similar to that of the referees and it was a new triumph for the opposition right.
The third and last part of the negotiations, however, had been trapped, precisely because of its difficulty: the integration of the body that will draft the new Constitution and the way in which it will be elected.
This is what was negotiated last weekend by the ruling and opposition political parties and what was communicated to the public this afternoon.
Differences with the previous process
The new agreement has important differences with the previous process.
Before it was a body of 155 members, where the independents applied without the need for the parties.
The right did not achieve even a third of representatives.
There were 17 seats reserved for indigenous peoples, while on this occasion "the council will be made up of supranumerary indigenous seats [out of the 50 members], assigned according to the percentage of effective voting in the election [of those who vote with the seats ballot]. natives]".
The previous body had a year of work, in which serious problems arose, for which reason it was losing citizen support.
The proposal rejected in September had 355 articles and proposed, among other issues, representative democracy and reinforced with modalities of direct democracy that Chile has never known, decentralization and, together with parity and an ecological perspective -which crossed the entire text- They guaranteed a large number of social rights.
The norms that generated the greatest rejection were plurinationality –like countries in the region such as Bolivia and Ecuador–, indigenous territorial autonomies and the government system with a presidential regime and asymmetric bicameralism, which represented the end of the Senate, with 200 years of history.
With the 12 points that will be the basis for the new constitutional discussion, the 14-member body that will allow the future council to settle its differences and especially with the 24 experts, who will be appointed by Congress, the options are largely limited. of innovation of the 50-member constituent.
It is, in short, a proposal that will not accommodate political extremes, neither on the right nor on the left.
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