Constituent of Chile elects María Elisa Quinteros as its new president

The epidemiologist and academic Maria Elisa Quinteros was elected after a ninth round of voting as the new president of the body in charge of drafting a new Constitution in Chile, which will replace the one inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

With 78 votes out of a total of 154, Quinteros will replace the Mapuche academic Elisa Loncón, whose election on July 4 was interpreted as a nod to women and a gesture of recognition to ancestral peoples.

“Six months ago a strange story began for the republican life of Chile. And that strangeness, now familiar, was also due to a fact that previously would have seemed implausible: a Mapuche woman governing an institution that marks the destiny of the country, “said the linguist yesterday in her farewell speech.

Quinteros prevailed in a vote marked by the marathon 18-hour working day yesterday Tuesday and that, until this morning, still had not achieved an absolute majority that would define the management positions for the last six months of operation of the body.

Felipe Mena, Beatriz Sánchez, Roberto Celedón and Agustín Squella also appeared as an option in what was the first attempt at this new session of the constituent plenary session that began at 3:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. GMT), in addition to the scientist Cristina Dorador, who was emerging as a favorite yesterday, or the journalists Bárbara Rebolledo and Patricia Politzer, who emerged during the complex “puzzle” of voting yesterday Tuesday, in addition to Benito Baranda and Patricio Fernández.

During this day, the 154 conventionalists – mostly independent citizens, without affiliation to political parties, but with a progressive tendency – will also elect the successor to the vice president of the organ, the lawyer Jaime Bassa.

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 with a mandatory vote for its entry into force.

After months of 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 proposed precisely as the way to overcome the social outbreak, the greatest crisis in the 31 years of Chilean democracy, which left some thirty dead and thousands of injured.

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

Much of society sees in the constituent process an opportunity to change the current subsidiary role of the State and guarantee more social rights, a vision that is also shared by the president-elect, Gabriel Boric.