Because the Chileans said no to the new progressive constitution – Pierre Haski

The result is unquestionable, with over 60 per cent no to the draft reform of the constitution. Voting was mandatory, so participation was massive. The latest mobilizations in favor of the yes, including a large demonstration in Santiago on the eve of the referendum, were not enough to prevent the announced defeat. For weeks, in fact, polls have indicated majority opposition to the text that would have given Chile the most progressive constitution in the world.

But how was it possible that the voters decisively curbed political and social change, three years after the mass social movement and six months after the election of the young left-wing president Gabriel Boric?

Today Boric will gather the Chilean political parties at the Moneda palace to decide how to proceed. A supporter of yes, he had declared that in case of bankruptcy he would resume the process from scratch, with the election of a new constituent assembly. But another, less ambitious solution remains possible: to modify the current constitution with the inclusion of new rights, even if this would mean continuing to live with a text whose core was adopted in 1980 under the dictatorship of Pinochet-

Confusion and misinformation
There is no single reason for this refusal, despite the fact that the Chileans had largely approved the process that led to the drafting of the text.

The main mistake of the constituent assembly was undoubtedly that of wanting to do too much: after eighteen months of often confused debates, an extremely complex text of 178 pages and 388 articles was produced. The field of rejectionrejection, is a heterogeneous coalition of forces, each opposed to a part of the new constitution.

Furthermore, during the campaign there was a lot of misinformation, also because the complexity of the text made it difficult for the supporters of the yes to aim.
The ambition of the project is summed up in the preamble of the constitution, which proclaimed: “Chile is a social and democratic state, founded on the rule of law. It is multi-national, intercultural, regional and ecological ”.

New social rights such as those of women, indigenous peoples, nature and animals had been included in the constitutional charter. The constituent delegates were unable to compromise, and today they are paying the consequences.

One of the main issues of conflict is that of the rights of indigenous peoples, an aspect that may surprise after the election of a Mapuche woman, Elisa Loncón, as president of the constituent assembly. However, many Chileans were afraid of a split with the indigenous peoples, who are 13 percent of the population and the new constitution envisaged returning their ancestral lands to them.

Chile is often said to be a political laboratory: it was under the Pinochet dictatorship, with liberal economists working for the regime, and it was again after the social movements of 2019. So it is possible to learn from this failure. of constitutional reform, for example on the speed and extent of changes in a divided society. The future is yet to be written.

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)