The demonstration was called by the Unitarian Central of Workers (CUT) and was also attended by students, representatives of political and social organizations and local residents in general.
“Today we are in danger because the text of the new Magna Carta violates collective bargaining, the right to strike and freedom of association,” CUT President David Acuña told Prensa Latina.
Acuña regretted that the Republican Party (far-right party) and the conservative Chile-Vamos coalition, with a majority in the Constitutional Council, had abused the process to install retrograde and medieval ideas and limit collective and individual guarantees.
For his part, the president of the National Association of Tax Employees, José Pérez Debelli, warned that so far the tendency has been to vote against this fundamentally regressive and anachronistic bill.
The content enforced by the most conservative sectors also threatens gender parity and voluntary abortion in cases of rape, fetal infertility and danger to the mother’s life.
“Today a constitution worse than that of (Augusto) Pinochet is being imposed here,” warned former MP and Socialist Party activist Fanny Pollarolo, who denounced the regression in women’s sexual and reproductive rights and workplace successes.
He also rejected an attempt to constitutionalize the pension funds that have turned health into a business in a country where there are wide inequalities.
For Rosa Vergara, president of the National Association of Public Health User Councils, this project is about privileging those who profit from people’s suffering.
He recalled that 80 percent of the population is served in the public system, where it does not have enough resources, and even more so since after the end of the pandemic it is planned to lay off about six thousand workers.
The Magna Carta project being debated today will be put to a referendum on December 17th.
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