The new Chilean Constitution could look a lot like the old one

The new one chilean constitution It could end up looking very similar to the current one, approved during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, but having a democratic origin, since the right will lead the process of writing a new text after its electoral victory on Sunday, another heavy defeat for the president. gabriel boric.

The Republican Party, led by the hard-right leader José Antonio Kast who has openly defended the military regime, won more than a third of the votes in Sunday’s elections for the drafters who will write the new Constitution, a abrupt change from the majority of the left that led the first and failed attempt.

A victory for the right could set the stage for a similar conservative rewrite of the highly market-oriented original text, which has been singled out for fueling decades of strong economic growth in the copper nation but criticized for favoring social inequality, one of the reasons that sparked months of protests in 2019.

For the right the current moment is “the best of both worlds”, said political analyst Patricio Navia of New York University. “Let the people choose the Pinochet Constitution without the signature of Pinochet”.

“If it includes some improvements and demands from the left, we will have a Constitution very similar to Pinochet’s, but signed by Gabriel Boric and ministers of the Communist Party (part of the ruling coalition)”he added.

Boric, a former student protest leader, came to power in March last year with a hopeful mandate for reform, pledging to support planned progressive changes to the constitution.

But that process ended in failure in September, when voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal.

This time, voters seem to be more focused on restoring economic stability and dealing with inflation, alarmed by issues such as the rise in crime or the effects of irregular immigration, rather than radical social change.

“The political climate in Chile today is no longer the same as in 2019 or 2020”said political analyst Cristóbal Bellolio. “It seemed that the Chileans wanted great transformations and now it seems that they do not want to take any risk, that they want to reduce uncertainty.”

All of this has paved the way for far-right politicians like Kast, a lawyer who lost the runoff to Boric in the 2021 presidential election, who maintains a tough line on crime and the like.

Kast’s party won 23 of the 50 seats in the new Constitutional Council, while a separate coalition of traditional right-wing parties, which also supported the dictatorship but have tried to wean themselves from that heritage over the years, won 11 seats. .

The coalition of the ruling leftist parties, on the other hand, only won 16 seats.

With a required three-fifths majority to approve and include the new articles in the draft, the right could push the contents on its own since it will add 34 constitutional advisers.

Analysts said, however, that the right would likely agree to some changes to appease voters, including in areas such as social rights or indigenous recognition, among several others.

“If the Constitution proposal is more to the right than Pinochet’s Constitution, the people will reject it”said Navia, adding that the result left Boric very hurt and far from the image of a leader who promised to bury the Chilean free market model in the campaign.

“Boric said that Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism and would also be its grave. Neoliberalism is still very healthy and Boric is in the hospital, in the ICU”.

The defeat for the government comes shortly after Boric presented his ambitious proposal to increase state control over strategic lithium projects and create a new national company to exploit the white metal.

The plan already faces technical and political challenges, as part of the initiative must be approved by congress.

The government has also had difficulty advancing a comprehensive tax reform, key to furthering other social goals, which was rejected by lawmakers.

Rossana Castiglioni, a professor of political science at the Diego Portales University in Chile, said she was surprised by the low support for centrist parties and the high number of null and blank votes, which is a lesson for other progressive leaders and governments. region of.

Sunday’s vote was mandatory participation

“Supports are sometimes ephemeral. It is not enough to win an election, what happens between elections is very important”said the scholar, noting that the current economic landscape is very different from that of the previous leftist wave in Latin America during the commodity boom of the early 2000s.

“The lesson is that there must also be processes of strategic adaptation on the part of the left if it intends to win the elections in contexts in which it must face an economy that is more adverse”he added.

Source: Reuters