A little over a week ago, the President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, announced the launch of a communication campaign dedicated to “informed voting” on the referendum on Chile’s new constitution, which will take place on September 4th. The initiative, which has been rather limited so far, has been widely presented as a means to better inform voters and electricians who must decide whether to replace the current constitution, written during General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1980, with the Brexiteer Constituent Assembly and outcome of the major protests that have been taking place in Chile since late 2019.
With the “informed vote” campaign, Boric wants to counter the disinformation that has spread around the constitutional text, which also touches on very important issues such as the right to property and the right to voluntary abortion.
Sebastián Valenzuela, a Chilean university professor, called “brutal” the disinformation about the constitution, which was made with the aim not only of causing confusion in voting, but also to act as a political tool of attack against the less conservative sections of society who, the, the they are more in favor of voting “yes” in September.
For example, false news has been spreading in recent weeks that the new constitution will not protect private property and that private homes will eventually become state property. This is of course not the case and Article 78 makes it clear that property is a right protected by law and that no one can be deprived of ownership of his assets unless expropriation is authorized (possible in certain cases regulated by law) .
It was also said that the text would allow women to have abortions up to the ninth month of pregnancy, but this is not true. Article 61 guarantees the right to an abortion, but stipulates that it will be regulated according to current law: that is, if the life of the woman is at risk, if the fetus is severely deformed and if the child has been raped within 12 weeks, the increase to 14 if the victim is under the age of 14 (in Chile, abortion was partially decriminalized in 2017, but remains illegal in the vast majority of cases).
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Other false reports on issues of great public interest were widely discussed and then denied by specialized institutions or bodies: such as that claiming that the private healthcare system would disappear (false), or that migrants from Venezuela or Haiti could also vote .
Also, the news that there are no fines for people over 60 who don’t vote is not a rumor spread with the belief that most of them would vote against the new constitution: next September 4th vote will be obligatory for everyone who has the qualifications for it.
Ana María Castillo, co-director of the Nucleus of Artificial Intelligence and Society of the University of Chile’s Institute for Communication and Image, told ADN Radio that these attempts to manipulate information are nothing new but are still very present in this election be campaign period.
A little less than a month after the vote, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the outcome. According to the latest poll by analytics firm Cadem (released July 22), 47 percent of respondents would be willing to reject the new constitution, just 39 percent would agree and 14 percent said they were undecided. In January, 56 percent were in favor, 33 percent against.
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