Many were the criticisms that accompanied the process, even the controversy was present with the people in charge of writing the text.
Despite the fact that in October 2020 almost 80% of voters in Chile voted in favor of changing the Constitution and doing so through a Constitutional Convention, almost two years later the text that resulted from that process was widely rejected in the plebiscite out of the constitutional process.
The 155-member Convention that drafted the proposal was elected at the polls and its composition opted to reflect citizen demands for parity, diversity, indigenous representation and independence from traditional politics.
But the text that he prepared for 12 months failed to convince the majority of the electorate and barely achieved 38% support. It is, at first glance, a paradox in a country that saw the constitutional process as a way out of the crisis of the social outbreak of 2019.
After giving their strong support for a constitutional change in the plebiscite for the entry of the Chilean constituent process and voting in December 2021 as president for Gabriel Boric, a supporter of “approval”, a large majority decided this Sunday to discard the alternative that was presented to him in his exit referendum.
BBC Mundo explains three factors that influenced the decision.
1. Other alternatives for constitutional change
In the days prior to the plebiscite, although the government parties favored approval and the political opposition promoted rejection, both committed to continuing the constituent process regardless of the result of the plebiscite.
Against this background, the result of the vote could well represent not the rejection of a constitutional change, but the opposition to the proposed text.
In a public commitment to a new Constitution, the opposition proposed moving towards a social State of law and, marking a difference with the proposal of the Convention, offered to defend the Senate, instead of replacing it with a Chamber of the Regions, and to recognize Chile as a multicultural state, instead of a multinational one.
Congress also approved reducing the quorum necessary to reform the 1980 Constitution, which, after the triumph of the rejection this Sunday, remains in force in the country.
In the message of the corresponding law, the plebiscite was explicitly mentioned, pointing out that the lowering of the quorum “will prevent it from being argued, on the one hand, that it is not possible to carry out an agenda of profound transformations (…) and, on the other hand, On the other hand, in the event that the proposed text of the new Constitution is not approved by the citizens, it will facilitate building the necessary majorities to continue with the constituent process.”
The president, Gabriel Boric, who signed as a deputy the agreement that opened the itinerary of the constitutional change in 2019, assured on television before the plebiscite that, if he won the rejection, it would be appropriate to open a new constitutional process.
“For me, what is at stake today is whether we go back to square one (start) in case the ‘rejection’ wins and we have to start a new constituent process, because here there was already a constitutional reform that established the mechanisms in which the current Constitution of 1980 is reformed, and that is through a 100% elected convention,” he added.
After winning the rejection, he said that they will work on a new proposal.
“The feeling I have is that it has been a very rare process, very atypical in Chilean history and in the history of plebiscites. The campaign was presented as an election of the lesser evil. The ‘approval’ gave him a tone that, although the project was not good, it was better than the current Constitution. And those of the ‘rejection’, the same”, Roberto Méndez, an academic from the Catholic University and an expert in public opinion, told BBC Mundo.
“That has to do with the Chilean situation, even with the aesthetics of the process, which kept people away. The idea was installed that the process did not end on September 4, that regardless of the result we are involved in a long problem and that we would be discussing procedures, contained for years.
2. Criticisms of the text
Although important international constitutionalists highlighted the quality and innovations in the constitutional proposal, especially in areas such as parity and environmental protection, the text faced various criticisms within the country.
In the rejected document, for example, the Chilean state was defined as multinational. As the political scientist Pamela Figueroa told BBC Mundo, the groups for rejection associated plurinationality with the division of the country and with the creation of the original peoples as a privileged group, and that discourse permeated the national debate.
Although those who favored the ‘approval’ insisted on the need to read the proposal and the text was among the best-selling publications in the country, the length and complexity of a constitutional proposal, added to the misinformation that spread on social networks, made doubts about its content grow in an important part of the electorate.
The text ordered the creation of indigenous territorial autonomies, while ensuring that the country’s territory was indivisible, and raised respect for indigenous justice systems, which part of the population identified as contrary to the principle of equality before the law.
The idea that the new Constitution would not protect the right to home ownership was so widespread that the ruling parties had to leave a written record that it would be protected under all circumstances.
3. The evaluation of the Convention
Although trust in political parties, the Chamber and the Senate have been declining in the country, the controversies in the development of the Constitutional Convention and the difficulties in communicating their work have also been generating distance with part of the citizenry.
Shortly after its installation, a conventional campaigner testifying to the country’s shortcomings in health matters, admitted having lied about his cancer diagnosis.
Although the Convention developed a highly complex task over time and under the agreed conditions, the most radical declarations and gestures of its members had a broad impact on the public debate, although they did not pass the two-thirds necessary for their inclusion.
According to the CEP survey published in the final stretch of the constituent work, more than half of the reasons for voting ‘rejection’ were associated with a critical view of the Convention.
next steps
Chile is one of the few countries in Latin America that kept the Constitution approved under the military dictatorship democratic. The first reform processes arose from the moment power returned to the civilian population, in 1989, and lasted until 2005.
In 2015, former president Michelle Bachelet presented a route to change the Constitution, but in 2018, the government of her successor, Sebastián Piñera, stated his desire not to continue with the process.
After the social outbreak of 2019, and in the midst of massive protests, the opposition and the government agreed to the agreement that gave rise to the constitutional process that concluded this Sunday with the rejection.
With this result, the constitutional legal itinerary designed in the “Agreement for Peace and a New Constitution” signed in November 2019 is closed as a way out of the political and social crisis generated by the social outbreak.
In the immediate term, Chile will continue under the 1980 Constitution. The decision to write a new Constitution or reform the Magna Carta in force will depend on the citizenry, the political will to advance the commitments made, and the agreements that can be reached and approved. in the two chambers of the Chilean Congress and with an opposition senatorial majority.
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