The campaign for the plebiscite of the Constitution began in Chile

First modification: 07/07/2022 – 13:30

In Chile, the campaign towards the plebiscite began this Wednesday, July 6. On September 4, 15 million Chileans must decide whether to approve or reject the new Magna Carta to bury the one inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

For now, the polls show that the majority of voting intentions reject the new Constitution, between 51 and 44%, while approval ranges between 41 and 25%.

What has most upset a section of the citizenry has to do with the work of the Constitutional Convention and the way the final draft was written. “They find that there was a conflict between the conventional constituents and that is at odds with the expectations that the citizens had raised,” explains Pamela Figueroa, coordinator of the New Constitution Observatory, which brings together academics and experts in public policies that follow this process.

The text was delivered this Monday to President Gabriel Boric and also generates rejection for its content. According to political analyst Kenneth Bunker, “he is overly politicized, he removes and adds things that take him away from the middle class, the working class, to focus too much on a progressive left,” he tells RFI.

He considers that although it has many elements that deepen democracy, it also has problems. “Chile is going through an economic crisis, the Chilean peso is at the worst exchange rate against the dollar, crime and immigration levels are very high,” says Bunker, explaining that Chileans are not projecting themselves into the next 25 years but in daily problems.

In any case, the Chileans will settle next September 4 in a plebiscite where the vote will be mandatory.