Chilean representatives approve list of specialists for constituent process

The Chamber of Representatives of Chile approved on Tuesday (24) the list of 12 names that will integrate the Commission of Experts that will advise the constituent process, a space that will be composed of 24 people and whose other positions will be defined on Wednesday by members of the Senate.

The group of experts, ratified with 123 votes in favour, four against and four abstentions, out of a total of 155 representatives, will be responsible for drafting the project that will serve as the basis for the Constituent Council to prepare the new Constitution proposal as of June.

This is a group of academics whose list was transversely negotiated by the political parties with parliamentary representation, based on a system that complies with the parity requirement: six women and six men.

The House’s list of experts is made up of lawyers Natalia González and Max Pavez, as representatives of the ultra-conservative Independent Democratic Union (UDI); lawyers Catalina Salem and Juan José Ossa, for National Renewal (RN); Flavio Quezada, for the Socialist Party (PS), and lawyer Carlos Frontaura, for the far-right Republican Party (PR).

Also included are lawyer Verónica Undurraga, from the Party for Democracy (PPD), lawyer Paz Anastasiadis, from Christian Democracy (DC); sociologist Alexis Cortés, for the Communist Party; lawyers Domingo Lovera and Antonia Rivas, for the Frente Ampla (FA), and opposition lawyer Marcela Peredo, former member of the People’s Party and independent.

Political groups have been debating for weeks which names they can put forward as constitutional experts. For some parties it has not been an easy task because their best staff participated in the previous constituent process and are now disabled.

On January 11, the Chamber approved the constitutional reform that allows Chile’s second constituent process to have a new Constitution within one year.

Members of the so-called Constitutional Council will be elected at the polls on May 7 and will have up to five months to draft the proposed text, which will then be voted on by citizens in a plebiscite on December 17.

With information from LGI