The fundamental law dating from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet will remain in force. The Chileans rejected, on Sunday December 17, for the second time in just over a year, a draft new Constitution. The “against” vote won 55.75% of the votes, while the “for” obtained 44.25%, according to official results published by the Electoral Service (Servel) after 99% of the ballots were counted.
More than fifteen million voters were asked to vote for or against this new fundamental law, with a very conservative tone.
No new attempt to reform the Constitution
The text submitted to the vote was written by those who defend the legacy of General Pinochet, after the rejection in September 2022 of a first progressive proposal supported by the young left-wing president Gabriel Boric. The latter, the youngest leader in the history of Chile, aged 37, closed the door to any new attempt to reform the Constitution.
“Under this mandate, the constitutional process is closed. There are other emergencies,” declared the left-wing president, in a speech at the presidential palace of La Moneda. “Our country will continue with the current Constitution, because after two constitutional proposals submitted to a referendum, none has succeeded in representing or uniting Chile in its beautiful diversity,” added the president, who supported the first proposal put forward by the left and opted for neutrality on the second.
The revision of the Constitution of the Pinochet era (1973-1990), considered as a brake on any fundamental social reform, was enacted to satisfy the social movement of 2019 against inequalities which left around thirty dead. A year later, 80% of Chileans approved the drafting of a new Constitution.
A consultation on President Boric
After the rejection of the first proposal, Gabriel Boric suffered a new setback in May when the ultra-conservative right came first in the ballot to elect the members who would form the Constitutional Council responsible for drafting the new fundamental law. The Republican Party has seduced voters with its uncompromising discourse against insecurity, which it mainly associates with Venezuelan immigration.
The opposition presents Sunday’s vote as a consultation on President Boric, who rode a wave of discontent to be elected at the end of 2021, at age 35, but whose popularity rating is now declining.
The proposed new Constitution reinforces the conservative character of the current text which dates from 1980, particularly on issues such as abortion and public security. The practice was completely banned in Chile until 2017 when a law authorized it but only in cases of risk to the life of the mother, rape or a fetus declared non-viable. The current Constitution “protects the life of the unborn”, but the new text goes further, making the embryo a person, thus making it more difficult to justify an abortion.
“Nothing to celebrate”
“We have failed to convince Chileans that this Constitution is better than the current one and that it is the surest way to end political, economic and social uncertainty,” said José Antonio Kast, leader of the far-right Republican Party and former presidential candidate defeated by Gabriel Boric in December 2021.
“There is nothing to celebrate. And not only can we not celebrate, but the government and the left cannot rejoice either because the damage that Chile has suffered in the last four years is immense and several decades will be needed to repair them,” he added.
The new text, on the other hand, recognizes indigenous peoples for the first time, a long-standing aspiration of indigenous peoples, mainly Mapuche, who represent around 12% of the population, but does not respond to their demand for more autonomy. Andrès Calfuqueo, political science student of Mapuche origin, assures that the new text does not “represent” him. It “was born from a process that promised to unite Chileans but ended up dividing them.” Enthusiasm for a new Constitution has been dampened by the pandemic, inflation and a growing sense of insecurity and weariness.
President Boric, “will take advantage of this moment to promote stalled reforms, mainly tax and pension reforms”, estimated Rodrigo Espinoza, director of the School of Public Administration of the Diego Portales University (UDP) . For Stéphanie Alenda, analyst at the Faculty of Education and Social Sciences at Andrés Bello University, “the big loser is the political class as a whole […] with four years of constitutional debate and two failed attempts at consensus on a text.