Chile initiated proceedings this week to attempt, for a second time, to rewrite its constitution — six months after the previous attempt was overwhelmingly rejected by the Chilean electorate in 2022.
For this new attempt, the Chilean Parliament designated a group of 24 experts — 12 men and 12 women — chosen by political parties with parliamentary representation in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate.
As requested by Chilean leftists, the group will be led by Verónica Undurraga, a lawyer of the left-wing Party for Democracy (PPD). Sebastián Soto, a constitutionalist close to former centrist President Sebastián Piñera and representative of the Political Evolution (Evópoli) party, will serve as vice president of the group.
Poll workers prepare for a referendum vote on the draft of a new constitution, at a polling station in Santiago, Chile, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Luis Hidalgo)
The expert group is tasked with preparing an initial draft via consensus over the span of the next three months that will serve as the legal basis for a new group of 50 constituents that will be elected in a mandatory election to be held in May. The elected members will form a Constitutional Council tasked with drafting the finalized proposal that will be either approved or rejected at a later date via a nationwide referendum.
The two-month electoral campaign for the new Constitutional Council began this Wednesday, with 350 candidates vying to occupy one of the 50 seats of the council that will ultimately draft a new constitutional proposal for the South American nation starting in June 2023.
With it, Chilean lawmakers hope to avoid a repeat of the previous attempt. In the first round, the concept of organizing a constitutional convention was overwhelmingly approved by the electorate. Those chosen to draft the document produced a far-left constitution proposal that was subsequently just as overwhelmingly rejected by Chileans.
Calls and constant pressure for a new constitution to replace Chile’s current one, approved in 1980 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, was the ultimate demand of violent far-left riots that initially began as a protest over a $0.04 public transit fare hike in 2019 announced by the centrist government of then-president Sebastián Piñera.
The violent leftist riots, which spanned years, left at least 34 dead, burned churches, and widespread damage.
View of a car burnt by demonstrators during clashes with a riot police vehicle on the commemoration of the first anniversary of the social uprising in Chile, in Santiago, on October 18, 2020, as the country prepares for a landmark referendum. (MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP via Getty Images)
Although Piñera ultimately canceled the public transit fare hikes, the violent leftist rioters continued to unleash havoc in the country, ultimately demanding that a new constitution be approved — even though the Chilean constitution has no say on the matter of public transit fares in the capital.
The Pinochet-era 1980 constitution has been amended 31 times and has thus become significantly different from its original iteration.
What followed the riots was a lengthy two-year process initiated during the government of Sebastián Piñera and continued by the current administration of far-left President Gabriel Boric. The process culminated with a radical leftist new constitutional proposal approved by a predominantly leftist convention.
Even though the demands for the proceedings towards a new constitution were met, far-left rioters continued to nonetheless spread violence throughout Chile during the duration of the constitutional convention’s process, prompting President Gabriel Boric — who is one of the most prominent figures that called for a new constitution for Chile — to plea with the rioters, asking them to stop “normalizing violence.”
The finalized 388-article core legal structure proposal was praised as the “most progressive” constitution in the world and was heavily promoted by leftist politicians and activists.
Despite 78.31 percent of the Chilean electorate having voted in favor of initiating the proceedings to start a new constitutional process in 2020, the far-left proposal was overwhelmingly rejected by 61.86 percent of the electorate in its corresponding September 2022 mandatory referendum.
Demonstrators supporting the reform of the Chilean constitution celebrate while waiting for the referendum official results at Plaza Italia square in Santiago on October 25, 2020. (Photo by PEDRO UGARTE/AFP via Getty Images)
A poll conducted by Chilean polling agency Cadem in December 2022 showed that 63 percent agreed that Chile needs a new constitution, and 36 percent disagreed. When asked if they approved of the new method to draft a new constitutional proposal for Chile, 51 percent agreed that the new constitution proposal be drafted by 50 elected council members and a group of 24 experts, against 46 percent that expressed their disapproval of the new method.
Another poll, conducted by Chilean polling agency Pulso Ciudadano (Citizen Pulse), showed that by February only 42 percent showed interest in the new constitutional process. Of these, 35.6 percent answered that they pay no attention to it. Pulso Ciudadano‘s poll also showed that 57.1 percent of those asked have little to no confidence in the new constituent process.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.