The body has nine months that could be extended to twelve, to complete its mission. For the next six, the president and vice president will be renewed.
The Constitutional Convention of Chile will proceed to discuss this Tuesday the articles of the Magna Carta bequeathed by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-90) and which will be plebiscited this year during the term of the president-elect, the leftist Gabriel Boric.
Installed chaotically on July 4, the Convention is the daughter of the social protests of 2019 that hacked the neoliberal economic model that turned Chile into an economically exemplary country in the region but broken by inequalities.
The crowds that took to the Chilean streets at that time pointed to the current Constitution as the source of inequality and demanded a new model of the State that would guarantee public health, universal quality education or an improvement in pensions.
The convention “comes to be installed a bit by stumbling between the other constituted powers (…) The Constitutional Convention is up and running, with all its internal institutions fully formed and all the necessary internal organization,” he tells AFP. its vice president, Jaime Bassa, professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valparaíso.
The body is made up of 155 members elected by the citizenry in 2021 on an equal basis and with seats reserved for indigenous peoples, a “special and unique” milestone, says Bassa, in the democratic history of Chile.
“It is a form of exercise of political power for which the institutions were not prepared,” says the vice president, who together with the president, the Mapuche academic Elisa Loncon, make up the board of directors.
The Constitutional Convention has nine months that could be extended up to a year, according to Bassa, to complete its mission. In its first six years, it has dedicated itself to building an institutionality from scratch.
“It is marching even on the expectation or the first omens that there were about the constituent process,” he tells the AFP the professor of Law at the Diego Portales University, Leslie Sánchez.
The directive and the deputy presidencies, the commissions and the regulations that govern them were created and the reception of proposals for articles began.
Both citizens and constituents have been able to present proposals that will be debated from now on. This January 4, halfway through the work of the Constitutional Convention, the board of directors will also be changed.
President and Vice President will be renewed
“One hopes that the constituent power is capable of carrying out that act of existential reaffirmation that means that a people claim for themselves the ownership of political power,” emphasizes Bassa in his last days as vice president.
He and Loncon were elected by the 155 constituents on July 4 to chair the Convention. Now they have to leave their place to a new couple to continue the work of drafting a new Constitution.
“We did it with great force, a lot of self-management, we were building on the fly and having spent six months, after those days, we can look with great satisfaction at the work that has been done,” explains Bassa.
“Loncon and Bassa are symbolism,” says Sánchez. “That there is parity between men and women is relevant, that the president is a woman, that she also comes from the original Chilean peoples. They were all symbolic signs that were building a story to the Convention, “he adds.
Six months to write
The new referents must continue the work until they present the new Constitution within six months, which will be validated or not in a mandatory voting plebiscite.
“The work that is coming is a little more technical, perhaps less symbolic than the installation,” the constitutional lawyer, Sebastián Zárate, told AFP.
“Certain balances of political legitimacy must be maintained with respect to the ideological origin of each one of them, equally and ideally representation of native peoples,” explains Zárate about the new presidency, which will again be elected from among the 155 constituents.
Boric would support the process
Bassa trusts that in addition to the work done in the first six months, the Constitutional Convention will benefit from the newly elected president, the 35-year-old young leftist Gabriel Boric, who will take office on March 11.
He complains that the current president, the conservative Sebastián Piñera, “had been rather against” the constitutional process.
“It opens to a different stage in the closing stage, with a president who supported the constituent process and who will also guarantee the autonomy of the Convention to be able to bring this to fruition,” says Bassa.
On November 15, 2019, amid the most violent protests of the social revolt, which left 34 dead, the entire Parliament of Chile, except the Communist Party, agreed to call a referendum to decide whether to draft a new Constitution.
Boric signed him as a deputy, which earned him criticism even from his own party. His commitment to the institutional process to change the Magna Carta was also reflected after winning the elections on December 19.
“This is a long-term State issue. We all have to do our best (…) if the Convention goes well, Chile will do well, ”said Boric when visiting the institution two days after his victory. (I)
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