The 51 members of the Constitutional Council, responsible for drafting a new proposal for a Magna Carta in Chile to replace the current proposal inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), have this Wednesday in a solemn ceremony their Assumed office They attended President Gabriel Boric.
“This Council is being set up today because we have come a long way in making agreements work, and moreover it shows our strength as a country in our ability to put the common good ahead of individual interests,” the President said.
It’s about Chile’s second attempt in three years to draft a basic lawafter 62% of citizens voted against a constitutional proposal drafted by a convention with a majority of the left in a referendum last September.
“Citizens expect a cooperative process in which the different parties are able to give way when necessary and find common ground to find what is best for Chile,” said Boric, who ended his speech with this assurance The country ‘would do well to close this loop’.
The composition of the new body is radically different from the previous one, with the extreme right holding 23 of the 51 seats, giving it the power to veto constitutional norms.
The ruling party won just 16 seats in elections a month ago and Chile’s traditional right wing, Vamos, got 11 councillors.
The final seat is for a Mapuche activist, elected under the quota reserved for indigenous peoples, while the centre-left parties that ruled during the transition to democracy were excluded from the body.
“Let’s fight for the deal, let’s fight for the peace of the nation. Otherwise history will not forgive those who let themselves be carried away by the passions and revenge of the past,” said Miguel Litín, the first adviser to take office and will chair the panel during this first session until a board is elected is.
The consultants will have it Five months to develop a new proposal which will take place in a referendum on December 17 and will work on a preliminary draft, written by a group of experts appointed by Congress, containing a dozen basic principles to avoid a re-establishment proposal, such as the social and democratic rule of law.
The big question is whether the extreme right, which defends the neoliberal model established during the regime and has veto power in the Council, will respect these fundamentals or unite with the traditional right to change them at the root.
Boric himself assured on Sunday on Chilevisión that he would “approve” the text in its current form.
The two constituent processes, that of 2022 and the current one, arose after the social outburst of 2019, the largest protests since the end of the dictatorship that left around thirty dead and thousands injured.