Santiago, Chile – Chile goes to the polls this Sunday with mandatory voting and great apathy, in a second constitutional process to replace the Magna Carta inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1991). The process will be marked by institutional control and a framework designed by Congress, while a feeling of skepticism prevails among the citizens that the new attempt can bring about real change.
It has been one of the most “fomes” campaigns (Chileanism for boring, unfunny) of the many that the Latin American country has experienced in recent years. The candidates are barely known, there have been no flags or events in the streets, many do not know who to vote for and some even forget that this Sunday, May 7, 15 million citizens are summoned to the polls.
A new appointment to elect the 50 people who will make up the Constitutional Council in charge of drafting a second formal attempt (there was another attempt in the second term of Michelle Bachelet 2014-2018, which was not consolidated) to change the 1980 Constitution created during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
After the effervescence of the previous process, marked by the election of 155 members of a Constitutional Convention where two thirds of the candidates were from the left and independent, These will be the second mandatory voting elections in the country in a long time.
The previous project was marked by the willingness to participate of hundreds of social organizations. However, its final text was categorically rejected on September 4 by 62% of the population.
More than 13 million people voted in the 2022 election, and turnout this time is expected to be similar. An influx that would be explained for a civic duty and for a fear of finesmore than because Chileans are really motivated to participate.
institutional design
In this new constitutional process the norms are different.
“The process has an institutional design quite different from the previous one,” says Pamela Figueroa, a political analyst and academic at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of Santiago (USACH).
Based on the previous rejection, the Senate and Congress are “the ones who reach a transversal agreement not only with the discussion procedure” of the new process, but also “establish 12 bases that are constitutional contents”. An aspect that, according to the analyst for France 24, makes a big difference because now there is “an outline of discussion regarding the contents of the constitutional text itself.”
In addition, affirms the expert on constitutional issues, it is about “a process where institutional politics has a more important and influential role than in the previous one”. This, because there is a more technical discussion but also “a political perspective” in all the contents.
So the new Constitution not from a blank sheet, but from 12 pre-agreed points that no one can skip. To ensure this, there are three functioning bodies designed by Congress:
- The Expert Committee made up of 24 members jointly and appointed by Congress.
- The Admissibility Committee in charge of “arbitrating” that no norm transgresses the 12 principles or pre-agreed institutional bases, also joint and appointed by Congress.
- The Constitutional Council made up of 50 members who will be elected in the elections on May 7.
He Committee of Experts is already in operation and is preparing a preliminary draft of the document that will be discussed by the Constitutional Council when it comes into operation, on June 7. From that date they have five months to prepare a final textdeliver it to the President of the Government on November 7 and be approved or rejected by the citizens in an exit plebiscite with also mandatory voting scheduled for December 17 of this year.
Parity and indigenous representation
Some characteristic elements of the previous process were preserved, such as the parity of constitutional bodies, but others were lost, such as the representation of indigenous peoples. They are not included in the Committee of Experts or in the of Admissibility. In this way, the only option would be to elect a representative to the Constitutional Council. But, as Figueroa shows, “they have to have electoral support and only two indigenous candidacies registered.” In that sense, it is difficult for them to reach the threshold to be elected.
In the previous process “they represented 12% of the population, which is what is equivalent at the demographic level, but now they are underrepresented and that is explicit because they will only be able to have a representative if they obtain an important vote,” he points out. According to the expert, this is part of the Chilean inexperience regarding indigenous political participation, the exception of which was the previous Constitutional Convention.
“Those who are representatives of indigenous peoples in Congress have been elected through the traditional political parties and there have been no conditions or situations for indigenous peoples” to be properly represented, he says.
Another key issue that has had a place in the process is citizen participation. The process establishes a Secretary of Citizen Participation, which depends on the Constitutional Council and which has been delegated to two of the most prominent universities in the country, the University of Chile and the Catholic University. In addition, participation has been opened to the 49 accredited university organizations that exist in Chile.
The regulation “sought an institution with territorial coverage throughout the country, that has legitimacy and that can receive on behalf of the Constitutional Council” people who want to participate and send their opinion to the body that will only meet for five months “and that it does not have the capacity to receive everyone in its four commissions,” explains Claudia Heiss, head of Public Hearings and political analyst at the University of Chile, to France 24.
The universities will thus have a month, from June 7 to July 7 —the first of operation of the Constitutional Council—, to gather the opinion of citizens in four formats (citizen hearings, deliberative dialogues on-linespecific citizen consultations on certain topics in person or on-line, and popular standards initiatives).
“We are trying to establish some criteria for prioritizing historically excluded groups or territorial criteria,” says Heiss.
This is an initiative that seeks to ensure that people do not feel excluded because they are not from Santiago, the capital, or because they belong to historically underrepresented groups (indigenous peoples, children and adolescents, people with disabilities, people deprived of liberty and people in abroad). Thus, it has the object of sending an equitable sample to the Constitutional Council.
Subsequently, the universities will systematize the information to present a report to the Constitutional Council within a suitable period so that citizen opinion can influence the regulations that are being discussed.
According to the academic, in the previous process there was “a tremendous demand for participation”, but there was no capacity to satisfy it. “When it was achieved, with a tremendous effort in the middle of the process, to deliver citizen participation to the commissions, many times the rules of the Constitution had already been negotiated. Citizen participation could not be an incident and left many people who could not be heard“, says Heiss.
At that time, 20,000 hearing requests were received, while fewer than 2,000 people managed to enter the commissions.
Learned lessons
“Based on this impossibility, the design that is being made now is that people are received by the universities, which are going to record the participations, systematize them with data processing technology, make a reliable report of which are the most discussed topics and their directions,” says Heiss. And so, it is achieved “deliver the result of participation to the Constitutional Council in a timely manner” so that it can be used in political negotiations.
In addition to all this, all the previous processes of changing the constitutional text in Chile have been systematized —from the attempt of the Bachelet government, to the spontaneous constitutional councils that occurred during the effervescence of the social outbreak—. Everything that could be found since 2016 is systematized in a document, already at the service of the constitutionalists and open to the public.
“The previous process took place in a context of great effervescence, there was tremendous interest in the issue, there was a great will to participate, especially from the most reformist sectors, there was an epic of the constituent process that led many social organizations to mobilize, that it is not there today,” Heiss points out as one of the disadvantages of this second process.
“The political parties have had a fairly large control over the process and so far this has generated a process of distancing with a process that is not seen as a citizen, it is seen as highly controlled by party elites,” he says. And he adds: “There is a fairly large disaffection, there has not been much interest, the people are not aware of this election, the candidates have not managed to generate an electoral environment.”
Bridges to citizenship
For Heiss the rejection of the previous proposal and the failure of a Convention, with two thirds of independents, “does not mean that the people today are supporting the parties.” It is for this reason that the benches should “try to build bridges to civil society, to the citizenry.”
However, the expert highlights the mechanisms of participation as “a good sign”.
For Figueroa, who agrees with Heiss that the fervor of the previous process is not observed, the disinterest is also explained because “the country entered another cycle.” One that is marked, to a large extent, by a security crisis. In this sense, it seems that citizens are focused on other issues.
Despite this, the analyst stresses that despite “the failures of the previous processes” the one that opens on May 7 is “a new attempt” that shows the willingness of Chilean society to want to “solve the problem of constitutionality, which is a real problem”.
Both experts agree in pointing out that the change in the new proposal on the current Constitution of 1980 will depend on the way it was configure the definition of State in the new constitutional text.
In the 12 bases the State “is defined as a social and democratic State of law.” A change of perspective that, according to Figueroa, would be “very relevant in the model of development and of the State of Chile.” This would cease to be a subsidiary State.
There is something from the previous process that remains: the uncertainty of the results that the polls will yield this May 7 and that will define a good part of the course that the country’s history will take in the coming years.
