Chileans Distrust Announcement of New Constitution

November 11, 2019

Optimism and distrust prevailed in Chile last Monday as the Sebastian Piñera Administration informed the people they would begin a process to change the Constitution inherited from the Augusto Pinochet Administration, the source of inequalities according to experts and demonstrators on the fourth week of unrest.

Among other measures announced by authorities to put down popular unrest is an order given to the Carabineros police force to make “restricted use” of anti-riot rifles. The measure is a response to the international condemnation  of the excessive use of force used to repress the protests that resulted in at least 20 deaths and a dramatic 182 people have damage to the eyes from police bullets.

Following 24 days of peaceful protests, though many of them ended up violently with looting and fire by radical young people, most of pollsters agree that people’s support to the movement known in the social media as Chile Desperto or Chile Woke Up, is over 75 percent. And a similar amount of people are demanding a completely new Constitution.

Shifting its stance, the Piñera Administration announced last Sunday night their willingness to begin a process to draft a new Constitution through a “Constituent Congress” with broad citizen participation and a subsequent referendum for its ratification.

Interior Minister Gonzalo Blumel confirmed the information after a meeting in the residence of President Sebastian Piñera with leaders of the political coalition Chile Vamos, a coalition of four central-right and right-wing parties. These political groups have held onto the inherited Constitution of the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) and are reluctant in making any real change

The current Constitution, in force since 1980, has faced over 200 changes in more than 40 articles, Piñera said at an interview with local media last Saturday.

However, the charter does not acknowledge the State’s responsibility on providing Education and Health as a civil rights, two of the demands that millions of Chileans have been clamoring for in the streets since October 18.

The fourth week of demonstrations began with a general strike in the public sector, tens of people protesting in front of La Moneda Presidential Palace, and riots at Peñalolen commune in Santiago Province that bottled up traffic.

The unprecedented crisis since “democracy” returned has not only resulted in the 20 deaths, there are over one thousand injured, as well as claims of torture, rapes and abuses at the hands of the police.

“We have agreed to start the path towards a new Constitution. We understand this is a task we have to do thinking about the country,” said Interior Minister Gonzalo Blumel after the meeting.

Minister Blumel added that they are analyzing the best formula to make this change through a Constituent Congress that would have “a broad majority of citizen participation and in second place a referendum to ratify” the new Charter.

The Government resumed the idea of reaching a social pact given the protests by a population that is tired of a neo liberal economic model that has fractured society due to its unequal distribution of wealth and access to opportunities.

“Any constitutional change demands broad and profound agreements. For this reason, we have to convene all sectors, humbly, but also with capacity to dialog,” said Blumel without providing dates when the process will begin and how the people will have access to engage in it.

Some opposition leaders responded with optimism. “The Government is beginning to have a sense of reality,” said the president of the Senate Committee on Constitution, Felipe Harboe, from the central-left Party for Democracy. But many in the streets have little trust in Pinera or his administration and are fearful that he will drag the process out to see if the protests will die down.

“The Government’s strategy is to open a debate about which is the best mechanism and they are surely going to try and control who the representatives are who will actively be participating in the debate for a new Constitution,” college professor Claudio Fuentes told AFP.

The current Constitution does not establish mechanisms to replace it and it does not hand the President the possibility of calling a referendum.

Days after Piñera took office on March 11, 2018, his Government announced that they would not allow the progress of a draft bill that his predecessor Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018) had submitted to Congress with a view to change the Constitution. The bill proposed the inviolability of human rights, the right to health and education, wage equality among men and women.

Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau