Chilean parties divided by candidates to write a new Constitution

The left-wing parties presented on Monday night two separate lists of candidates for the Constitutional Council of 50 members voters will elect in May. The same happened with the parties of the opposition right.

Political divisions, particularly in the coalition backing President Gabriel Boric, should help centrist-leaning candidates, analysts say.

Chile is embarking on another attempt to rewrite the nation’s basic laws after voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal Magna Carta in last year’s referendum.

The plan is to replace the current document, which was implemented during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. At stake is legislation that made the South American country a darling of global investors.

Polls show that 40% of Chileans identify as moderate, which means that “there is demand for the center, but the supply of the center is practically absent“, according to Mauricio Moralesprofessor of political science at the University of Talca, in Chili.

The alliance headed by the Christian Democracy and the Party for Democracyas well as the center-right bloc, will compete to win this segment, he said.

A total of five lists with some 350 candidates will compete in the mandatory voting plebiscite for the council, which will begin drafting in June. The final product, which will be drafted in conjunction with input from a committee of experts, will be submitted to a national referendum in December.

Meanwhile, the Socialist Party decided to join a list with the left-wing coalition of Boric, I approve Dignityinstead of working with more moderate groups with which it formed an alliance in the 1990s and 2000s.

The fact that Congress has appointed the committee of experts and, furthermore, that all the candidates for the council are from traditional parties opens the way for less extreme ideals in the text, he said. Axel Callispolitical analyst and director of the polling company TuInfluyes.com.

“This will be a Constitution in which the right will have much more power than in the first process, considering the established quorums and the electoral rules.“, said Kenneth Bunkerpolitical analyst at the consultancy Political Tech Global. “The result will be more mixed and moderate than in the first proposal”.