The Chilean constituent will try this Wednesday to unblock the election of its president

The convention in charge of drafting a new Constitution in Chile will try again this Wednesday to unblock the election of its new president, after postponing the votes after a marathon day of more than 18 hours that ended in the early hours of the morning without any candidate obtaining the most.

After a session that seemed to be interminable, with a tediously slow voting process, the outgoing president of the organ, the Mapuche academic Elisa Loncón, announced that voting will resume after 3:00 p.m. local time (18 GMT on Wednesday).

The 155 conventionalists – mostly independent citizens with no affiliation to any party – conducted eight rounds of voting, but none of the candidates managed to gather the 78 votes necessary to replace Loncón, whose inauguration on July 4 for a period of six months , which ends now, was interpreted as a nod to women and ancestral peoples.

After 2:00 am local time (5 GMT), the scientist Cristina Dorador, who until now was leading the voting, withdrew her candidacy with the aim of “unlocking” the vote.

“I hope my step aside will be helpful in unlocking this issue. My name did not produce consensus ”, the professor at the University of Antofagasta, in the north of the country, admitted at a press conference.

Dorador, who had gathered the support of the Broad Front, the Communist Party and various social movements, remained in the sixth vote with only six votes from the majority, and in the following rounds he progressively deflated to 51 votes.

The microbiologist did not confirm whether in today’s session she will vote for the one who followed her in the voting preference, the independent Benito Baranda, psychologist and founder of the NGO América Solidaria, which raises more transversal support, to the right and to the left.

The length of the voting is due both to the lack of agreements and to the manual election and counting system that slows down the process even more, since each convention has to get up in each round to cast their vote, which are subsequently counted one by one per the board of directors.

The lack of agreement in this long first day was criticized by some conventionalists, for the inability to reach a consensus to elect a new board of directors and they assured that this weakens the image of the convention, others defended the negotiations and described the day as a “democratic exercise” .

“I find it truly deplorable and I am afraid that the public will take it in the same way,” said the conventional and liberal jurist Agustín Squella.

“We have never seen different groups, groups or groups talking, talking and building agreements publicly,” said the current vice president of the convention, attorney Jaime Bassa, whose replacement will also be chosen during the day.

The convention, the first joint convention in the world and with 17 seats reserved for indigenous peoples, has another six months to finish drafting the new Magna Carta, which must be approved in a plebiscite for its entry into force.

After three months preparing the operating regulations and designing the different thematic commissions, the convention began the substantive debate on the constitutional articles on October 18, when it was two years since the serious protests of 2019.

The constituent process was the solution agreed by the majority of political forces to solve the crisis of 2019, the most serious of the 31 years of Chilean democracy after the end of the military dictatorship, and in which protests were registered that resulted in a thirty dead, thousands injured and accusations against the security forces for human rights violations.

Although it was reformed more than 50 times in democracy, the current Magna Carta was inspired during the military dictatorship by the so-called “Chicago Boys”, a group of neoliberal economists who were disciples of Milton Friedman and who promoted the privatization of services such as water, pensions and health.