Chileans will mark another milestone on the road to writing a new Constitution when this Sunday they elect the drafters of the magna carta proposal after the failure of a first attemptand they do so in a very different political scenario from the one that surrounded the start of the process four years ago.
The popular election of the 50 “constitutional advisers” follows the installation in March of a commission of 24 experts appointed by Congress, who have prepared a preliminary draft on which the editors will work from June.
The shorter time, the previous work of the experts, a technical body that will function as an arbitrator and a smaller number of assembly members -a third of the dissolved constitutional assembly whose project was rejected in the plebiscite last September- are some of the formal differences between both processes.
There are also fundamental changes: if the first process, dominated by leftist forces and called independents, wanted to be more radical in its proposals, the second attempt is based on 12 institutional principles adopted in the agreement of the political parties when giving the green light to the second try.
Among these bases, it stands out that Chile is a unitary, social and democratic state of law and that the Central Bank is an autonomous body, among others.
“If the first process was highly uncertain, this is much more certain, or certain in what can happen. It is a more supervised process, with monitoring bodies, experts, lawyers, elected representatives. And traditional forces are the ones that are dominating Kenneth Bunker, a political analyst, told Reuters.
Until now, the expert commission has pre-approved rules to limit presidential re-election, define the position of the armed forces within the government and set thresholds for political representation to avoid the fragmentation of forces in Congress, among others.
The drafting body will work for five months and the project will be submitted to a ratification plebiscite on December 17, with mandatory participation as this Sunday.
other environment
The initial enthusiasm for leaving behind the Constitution drafted in the midst of the military dictatorship has faded, with a very different social and political environment from that of late 2019 when the original agreement was reached after a period of intense street protests.
The broad triumph of the “Rejection” option In the September plebiscite, the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of other concerns among Chileans, such as the rise of crime, the economic slowdown or inflation, leave little room on the agenda for this new political process that has been see with disdain
“I’m a little tired of the polarization. I voted for ‘Approve’, I wanted a new Constitution and to leave behind that of the dictatorship, but now I’m super off the hook. Today I’m just going to see who to vote for on Sunday,” Paz told Reuters Villafaña, 31, in charge of a small publishing house, while walking her dog in Santiago.
The government of the leftist Gabriel Boric, for its part, very committed to the previous process, has kept a good distance in an attempt to avoid paying the possible political costs, also concerned about carrying out its own reforms through difficult negotiations with Congress. .
For Sunday the candidates go in blocks: the government parties and other left or center forces go on two separate lists while the traditional opposition right competes on only one. There are also candidates from the hard-right Republican Party and the populist People’s Party who could do well, analysts say.
There are no recent, comprehensive and precise polls that allow us to anticipate the results of Sunday’s vote, but “it is likely that no bloc or party will obtain enough seats to lead the process independently and without compromise,” wrote the consulting firm Teneo.
But in a recent report, JPMorgan said that “it is interesting to note that there would be a consensus that right-wing lists (Republicans and Chile Seguro) reach around 50% of the seats.”
Some 15 million voters are eligible to vote on Sunday.
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