Chili: the Ref

source: Le Devoir/AFP September 4, 2022

author: Javier Torres Agence France-Presse 

translation: GoogleTranslate/doxa-louise

Santiago de Chile

Chileans overwhelmingly reject proposed new Constitution

A first referendum in October 2020 had however clearly called for the drafting of a new fundamental text (79%), the current Constitution then being considered as a brake on any substantive social reform.

Chileans massively rejected on Sunday the proposal for a new constitution which aimed to replace that inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), but President Gabriel Boric immediately announced his desire to relaunch "a new constitutional process".

The verdict of this referendum with compulsory vote is without ambiguity and exceeds all the predictions of the polling institutes. Some 61.9% of voters, or more than 7.8 million people, opted for the  "I reject"ballot , against 4.8 million (38.1%) in favor of that of "I approve", according to the final results.

This choice, however, only suspends the process of elaborating a new Constitution started after the violent popular uprising of 2019 demanding more social justice, and made the one drafted under the military regime guilty of all the ills of the country.

“I pledge to do everything in my power to build a new constitutional process,” solemnly declared after the results the 36-year-old left-wing president elected in December.

From the presidential palace of La Moneda, he launched "an appeal to all political forces to put Chile before any legitimate divergence, and to agree as soon as possible on the deadlines and contours" of this new process "in which, of course, Parliament will have to be the protagonist".

Celebrating the "defeat for the refounders of Chile", Javier Macaya, president of the ultra-conservative UDI party, said at a press conference that he also wanted to "continue the constitutional process", as the opposition had committed to during the campaign to block the proposed text.

Conservatism

A first referendum in October 2020 had clearly called for the drafting of a new fundamental law (79%), and to see erased the shadow of Pinochet and a Chilean laboratory of ultra-liberalism.

But the fruit of a year of work by the 154 members of a Constituent Assembly, elected in May 2021 to draft the proposal, seems to have shaken up the conservatist leaningsof a major part of Chilean society too much.

New social rights had however been designed to balance a society with strong social inequalities, by proposing to guarantee the right to education, public health, retirement and decent housing, so as not to leave them at the mercy  of  market forces.

An inscription in stone of the right to abortion , a subject that is debated in the country where abortion has only been authorized since 2017 in the event of rape or danger for the mother or the child, or even the recognition of new rights for indigenous peoples, has flamed the often heated debates in a campaign bathed in a climate of misinformation.

Former President Michelle Bachelet, who has just left her post as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, where she voted, and who remains very popular in her country, warned that in the event of rejection, "the expressed desires of Chileans will remain unsatisfied".

Like her, some 100,000 Chileans living abroad were called upon to vote on Sunday, for them on a voluntary basis.

"It is essential that there be a change and that we seize these opportunities which are given to us", told AFP Karina Pinto, a 33-year-old stylist who voted in Paris, where the "I approve" option largely prevailed.

"Resounding Failure"

This desire for change perceived abroad and in the capital Santiago, especially among the young people who took to the streets, was swept away by the immense rejection that the text inspired "in the south and the north of the country", according to Marta Lagos, sociologist and founder of the Mori polling institute.

These two regions are experiencing serious problems of violence and insecurity. In the south, due to conflicts over land claimed by radical indigenous Mapuche groups and, in the north, due to an influx of migrants, problems of poverty and human trafficking.

According to her, the “no” supporters form a “very heterogeneous” group with a strong “populist” fiber fueled by the “fear” of being dispossessed. But centre-left voices have also joined the protests.

"Nobody expected this gap of more than 20 percentage points," she wrote on Twitter, calling the result a "resounding failure."

“President Boric: this defeat is also yours,” declared far-right leader Antonio Kast, an open admirer of Pinochet, who lost in the second round of the presidential election.

“Many people prefer rejection because they are afraid of change”, summed up Sunday during his vote Alfredo Tolosa, a 47-year-old worker in a timber yard in Tucapel, a town of 13,000 inhabitants in the Biobio region (south ).