“Those of us who sign this letter are committed to a new Constitution. Many of us have spent years, long before the social outbreak, working with different social movements, civil society organizations, academia and political parties, to promote a new political coexistence agreement, capable of giving legitimacy to the rules of the game democratic and to make possible the changes that our society requires”.
With that definition, he opens the letter signed by 10 center-left and center figures where they opt for Rejection.
The four-page document – to which he had access The Third PM-, is backed by Michelle Bachelet’s former Minister of Finance, Andres Velasco; the cultural manager and promoter of the “Marca AC” campaign, Javiera Parada; the ex-conventional constituent Felipe Harboe; lawyer Antonio Bascuñán; the former president of Codelco and economist, Oscar Landerretche (PS); the actor Pablo Diaz; the former Minister of Finance of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Manuel Marfan; Sebastián Piñera’s former Undersecretary of Science, Carolina Torrealba; the former director of the Museum of Memory, Ricardo Brodsky and by the UC historian, Sun Serrano.
“The signatories, without assuming any type of special representativeness or on behalf of any specific groupand only as citizens committed to the need for a new Constitution —but not just any Constitution— we invite you to vote I reject this coming September 4”they conclude.
The letter – which was released on the same day that former President Ricardo Lagos, through a statement, affirmed that Neither the current nor the new Constitution elicits consensus– is critical of the constitutional process. They point out that the opportunity for change that was opened with the Approval in the entry plebiscite was “wasted”creating a new “partisan” Fundamental Charter -a word that Lagos also uses in his declaration-, contrary to the will expressed by President Gabriel Boric.
“Since its inception, the Convention has opted for an adversarial and exclusionary tone, where it has been more important to underline the causes of identity and the vindication of past pains than the construction of a shared national horizon (…). Jaime Guzmán’s error is reissued: turning the constitutional tool into a weapon of one sector against anotheralthough this time with the opposite ideological sign”, they sentence.
Thus, the central argument to be defined by the Rejection, point out in your message, is the configuration of the political system in the constitutional proposal. “In the political system, the proposal is not an advance with respect to what we have. The combination of a weakened Executive, a very powerful Congress of Deputies, and a Chamber of the Regions (which replaces the Senate) with greatly diminished powers, within the framework of rampant political fragmentation, anticipates a system that is more prone to conflict than to collaboration, and eventually also to capture over counterweights”, they report.
Coinciding with Lagos, the signatories call that, if the Rejection wins, continue with the constituent process. “The 1980 Constitution died politically in the 2020 plebiscite,” they say.
As it was known, at the beginning of June the “group” conversations for the drafting of the letter began, convened -the majority- by Javiera Parada. However, the exchanges had taken place during the previous months between those who already know each other, such as Parada herself with Landerretche, or with former Minister Velasco. The “breaking” point, some point out, was in April with the definition of the proposed political system.
Thus, the group of adherents was expanding and they do not rule out that, with this first release to public opinion, other signatories linked to that political world join. One of them would be former DC Senator Carolina Goic.
In the case of Stop, The cultural manager was one of the main precursors in 2013 of the “Mark your vote” movement, which called for the acronym AC (for Constituent Assembly) to label the votes of the presidential election that year.
The votes were counted by a “citizen network” of proxies for a new Constitution. At that time, the former militant from the DR pointed out that “the Constituent Assembly is an institutional mechanism for the construction of a Constitution.”
Later, Parada shared in the DR board led by Pablo Paredes – current head of the government’s Communications Secretariat (Secom) – as coordinator of Redes Ciudadanas. In 2019 she competed for the presidency of said party, however, the deputy Catalina Pérez was the winner. Parada marked her distance from that world in October 2019, after attending La Moneda with the group “Democracy is dialogue” to deliver a letter to former President Piñera, in the midst of the social outbreak. Days later, and after harsh criticism in her sector, she resigned from RD.
By the side of Landerretche, do not rule out that the still militant PS has problems within the community after this definition. A few days ago I pointed out Radio World what “For me the only relevant question is whether this text is worse or better than the one we have.”
In March 2022, the economist launched the book “Siete Nudos” where he addressed the main political tensions –subsidiarity, property, solidarity, decentralization, technical autonomy, budget initiative and public management– that the Constitutional Convention had to resolve in its final proposal to the country. .
Thus, during the afternoon of this Tuesday, Landerretche shared a text where he explains some of his reasons for adopting this definition. “This decision is, for me, a source of deep bitterness. I would prefer to be ratifying and approving a constitutional text that would attract the support of a sufficiently broad spectrum of citizens (…). Unfortunately, in my opinion, the political system that is proposed to us now is much worse, ”he says.
While the former Minister of Finance, Andrés Velasco, had been more explicit in his criticism of the Constitutional Convention and the process, he was even a signatory of the Amarillos por Chile manifesto. “The balance is quite negative (…) if after this long process we are ending with something that in political matters is not so different from what is current, that cannot be a good balance,” he said a few days ago. The economist, like the historian Sol Serrano, are also part of the Amarillos por Chile movement headed by the writer Cristián Warnken and which he already defined a few days ago.
Meanwhile, the ex-conventional constituent of the Approval collective, Felipe Harboe, participated in the constitutional discussion from the Fundamental Rights Commission, although he was critical of the development of the Political System Commission. “There is no bicameralism. In practice, it is a made-up unicameralism. It also considerably reduces the representation of the regions”, accused the former PPD in early April.