Overwhelmed Chilean constituents face backlash

The lights of Chile’s old Congress building in downtown Santiago hardly ever go out these days, as delegates to the Constitutional Convention, thick files under their arms, move between rooms for grueling debates that can last up to 12 hours. During short breaks, they consult on complex articles. Every minute that passes is a new vote.

As a result, some radical proposals that could fundamentally remake society and the economy, as well as scare off investors, are leaking out. One of the most controversial so far, and there is more to come, offers a veto to indigenous groups for any matter or issue that affects their rights.

Fuad Chahín, delegate and former president of the Christian Democratic party, was shocked. “The article requires indigenous consent for almost any matter”, said. “This could stop many development projects and public policies.”

Three delegates, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the sheer pace of work could lead to errors, while two others noted that some had endorsed the indigenous article without fully realizing what it said. They hope that the final committee of “harmonization” in charge of eliminating the contradictions in the text manages to do something about it.

February, the height of summer in the southern hemisphere and usually Chile’s quietest month, is turning into a wild ride. Every day is in the news as 154 elected delegates work at full speed to rewrite the nation’s charter, while the rest of the country, many of them on the beach, try to keep up. The Convention has a deadline of July 4, followed by a national referendum.

Huge changes seem to be underway. For three decades, while Chile enjoyed a reputation for free-market growth and stability, anger over inequality quietly grew in society. Violent demonstrations broke out in late 2019.

Now, with the drafting of a new Constitution and the entry into office of the youngest and most left-wing government in half a century, proposals that promote a green future, gender equality and social and indigenous rights are making their way.

In the voting process that worries the market today are articles that would nationalize the mining and lithium industries, prohibit mining and forestry on indigenous lands, replace the Senate and redesign private property rights.

In addition to all this, the Convention is running out of time, Credicorp said in a recent note. Seek an extension of Congress”could weaken public approval of the Convention and increase the likelihood of rejection”. Also, since most delegates lean to the left, getting more time would not necessarily lead to moderation.

For its part, the public, who voted in favor of the rewrite, is also beginning to worry. The percentage of those who would approve the final text based on what they know now has dropped to 47% from 56% in January, according to a Cadem poll.

Major newspapers, most with ties to the centre-right, right and establishment, are awash with columns expressing their concern.

Last week, a group of 75 public figures, many of them sympathetic to the centre-left governments that led Chile’s democratic transition in the 1990s, published a letter expressing their alarm at what they called a “refoundational euphoria that wants to start from scratch”, while silencing the moderates.

“A generation cannot assume the power to refound the Republic”, the president of the Senate, Ximena Rincón, told journalists when criticizing the decision of the Convention to eliminate the Upper House, a proposal that will soon face a final vote in plenary.

Ricardo Brodsky, former director of Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights, wrote in the conservative newspaper El Mercurio that the planned changes to the judicial system by the Convention have many legal professionals deeply concerned.