Boric would bet on another constituent process if the new Magna Carta is rejected in September

First modification: 07/15/2022 – 20:50Last modification: 07/15/2022 – 20:49

If the rejection is won, “there has to be a new constituent process,” including an election of conventional members, he said in an interview with the morning program on local television Chilevisión.

The option “Rejection” of the proposal for a new Constitution, prepared for a year by 154 conventional elected on a parity basis in a popular election and delivered to President Boric on July 4, leads the opinion polls.

The latest survey by the private demographic company Cadem, published last Monday, shows that 54% would favor “Rejection”, 35% “Approve” and 12% still “don’t know or don’t answer”.

The elaboration of a new Magna Carta, which replaces the one that remains as a legacy of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), was the institutional solution with which Chile channeled the strong protests that broke out as of October 18, 2019 .

In 2020, the plebiscite for the drafting of the new Constitution won with more than 78%

A year later, it was approved in a plebiscite, by 78.6% of the votes, to draft a new Constitution by a Constitutional Convention elected entirely by popular vote.

“If the ‘Rejection’ alternative wins, what will happen is that we will have to prolong this process for another year and a half, where everything will have to be discussed again from scratch,” added the Chilean president, whose Government is prohibited from establishing a position in the face of the plebiscite, which will be a compulsory vote.

“That is the path that Chile decided to take when it voted on October 25 in a plebiscite for a new Constitution that is drawn up by a 100% elected body for that purpose,” he added.

The constituent process agreed upon by the political forces -except for the Communist Party- establishes that if the new constitutional proposal is rejected, the Pinochet Constitution should remain in force.

“There is a transversal agreement today that the Constitution we have now does not represent a social agreement in Chile,” said Boric.