SANTIAGO — After being worked on for a year,
Chile’s new draft constitution will be officially submitted to President
Gabriel Boric on Monday before eventually being put to a referendum in the
deeply polarized country.
اضافة اعلان
The new text, which will replace the constitution
written during the
Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), aims to establish
new social rights.
It was drawn up by a constituent assembly of 154
citizens, most of whom were independent of political affiliation, that will be
dissolved a year to the day after it began work on July 4, 2021.
The document will then be put to a referendum on
September 4, with voting obligatory for 15 million Chileans, who will decide
whether to accept or reject the new constitution.
Rewriting the dictatorship-era constitution was a
major demand of protesters who flooded onto the streets in 2019 and kept up
weekly demonstrations for months before the coronavirus pandemic curtailed
them.
In the first of the new constitution’s 388 articles,
Chile is described as “a social and democratic State of law,” as well as “plurinational,
intercultural, and ecological.”
“It recognizes the dignity, freedom, substantial
equality of human beings, and their indissoluble relationship with nature as
intrinsic and inalienable values.”
“I think we have met the social demands, with the desires
of the citizens, which is what people hoped for and wanted of this process,”
Barbara Sepulveda, a draft assembly member from the communist party, told AFP.
“It is a proposal that represents a historic advance
in terms of democracy and the guarantee of social rights for our country, and
on top of that, it is filled with feminism from head to tail,” added Alondra
Carrillo, from the leftist Broad Front.
Other right-wing constituent members were less
enthusiastic.
For Cristian Monckeberg, this is a “missed”
opportunity to “build something that unites rather than divides” the country.
But with just 37 out of 154 seats in the constituent
assembly, the political right was in a minority.
The process “was not as simple and friendly as many
of us would have wanted and dreamed of,” writer and journalist Patricio
Fernandez, one of the 104 independent members of the assembly, told AFP.
‘From another era’
But with a two-thirds majority needed to approve each article, the only
source of solution was dialogue and compromise, even where tensions arose.
And if the
constitution is adopted, it will make Chile one of the most progressive
countries in the region.
The nationwide
right to abortion — something that has been overturned in the US — would become
enshrined in law.
“It’s a
constitution from another era. I’m totally convinced that if it is approved,
when we look back at this process, ... it will be seen with a lot more
tenderness and affection than we see it now,” said Fernandez.
Split equally
between men and women, the constituent assembly also contained 17 seats
reserved for Indigenous people, who make up around 13 percent of Chile’s 19
million population.
One of those members, Natividad Llanquileo, an
activist for Chile’s largest Indigenous group, the Mapuche, said the
constitutional process represented “the most democratic space that we have
known in the history of this country.”
As well as
recognizing the different peoples that make up the Chilean nation, the new
constitution accords a certain amount of autonomy to Indigenous institutions,
notably in matters of justice.
Several times in
recent weeks, millennial leader Boric has reiterated his support for the
constitutional project, adding that the current document represents an
“obstacle” to profound social reform.
Even so, several
opinion polls suggest the new constitution may yet be rejected. With the full
text still to be published, many Chileans say they are unsure.
Over the next two months, those in favor of the
change “have to work to convince that it will genuinely change people’s lives,
while Reject will attempt to attract more moderate sectors in their favor,”
Claudio Fuentes, a political scientist at the Diego Portales University, told
AFP.
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