2023-12-16 15:00:00
(CNN Spanish) — This Sunday more than 15.4 million Chileans must return to the polls to vote compulsorily in a new constitutional plebiscite, where citizens will have to choose between the options “for” or “against” a proposed Magna Carta. written this year by a Constitutional Council loaded to the right.
Unlike what happened with the previous process (2022), where the drafting body was elected by the citizens and where the left prevailed, the members of this year’s Council were appointed by the political parties, resulting in 22 councilors from the Republican Party of a total of 50 seats.
But the new text – classified by some experts consulted as more “conservative” than the previous proposal – does not convince large majorities either.
On Paseo Ahumada in downtown Santiago, in the midst of Christmas shopping and a heat wave that this Wednesday reached 31 degrees Celsius, some Chileans say they have little hope for what is to come.
“Specifically, the current proposal, I feel that it does not change much about the Constitution that already exists,” says Mauricio Osses, a 43-year-old banker who claims to have participated in the demonstrations of the social outbreak in 2019.
“I was very emotionally exhausted in the first process. But what had to happen happened, the people voted, decided and democracy worked. Now I have unplugged, fed up with this process,” she adds.
Like Osses, several Chileans who walk along Paseo Ahumada remember with strangeness the results of the 2022 plebiscite. In that first failed attempt, the “rejection” option prevailed with a categorical 61.86% of the preferences. But now experts prefer to be cautious about what the result could be this Sunday, especially for the citizen “forced” to vote.
“After almost four years, Chileans are exhausted with the constitutional discussion. The problems that in some way triggered the social outbreak (pensions, health, education, security, social inequality, among others) continue to be painful problems without answers,” political analyst and academic from the Central University of Chile, Marco Moreno, told CNN. .
“People have the feeling that these major emergencies have not had adequate treatment and that is why there is distrust, there is exhaustion when seeing that things are probably not going to change much, regardless of the result of next December 17,” says the professor. .
How can the result of the new plebiscite in Chile affect Boric?
For his part, Jorge Castañeda, former chancellor of Mexico and academic at New York University, affirms that whatever the result will be unfavorable for the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, who played a leading role in the previous process.
“If the Constitution proposal were approved, this would mean a victory for the extreme right, for the Republican Party and for its presidential candidate last time, José Antonio Kast, and who may be again. For Boric, I think the best solution would be for it not to be approved, for the ‘against’ to win, but that would be the least bad solution. It is not good either because finally a good part of Chilean society in 2019 decided that the solution to the social outbreak of that year was going to be precisely a new constitution,” says Castañeda, a CNN collaborator.
In the event that the “in favor” option is the winner this Sunday, the 37-year-old Chilean president indicated that as a Government they will fully comply with its correct implementation and installation. “And we will take charge, as appropriate, together with the other State bodies, of the process of legal reforms and regulatory adaptations that will be required.”
However, this could go against the own principles of Boric and his Government, since the new proposal raises among its contents the right of families to choose the education of their children and, with respect to abortion, the text states that It will seek “the protection of the life of the unborn,” among others.
On the contrary, if the proposal promoted by the Chilean right is rejected, Boric assured that, at least during his mandate, there will not be a third constituent process. This means that the current Constitution created during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet would continue to be in force.
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