RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Chile will start writing its new Constitution next July 4, the day on which the first session of the Constitutional Convention will be held, the country’s president, Sebastián Piñera, advised this Sunday, June 20.
The inaugural session of the convention will take place at the headquarters of the National Congress in Santiago de Chile. It will be dedicated to electing a president and a vice-president.
From then on, the constituent body, composed on a gender parity basis of 155 delegates, including 17 representatives of indigenous peoples, will have nine months – extendable by three – to draw up a new fundamental charter, which will be submitted in 2022 to a referendum with a mandatory vote.
The 155 members were elected at the polls last May 15 and 16, in the framework of a constituent process born of an agreement between political parties to quell citizen protests that erupted in October 2019 against the country’s socio-economic model.
“A HISTORIC MILESTONE”
“This Constitutional Convention will be a historic milestone. For the first time in our history, we will be democratically writing a new Constitution for Chile (…) Furthermore, it represents a great opportunity to achieve broad and solid agreements, which will give rise to a Constitution that is recognized and respected by all,” Piñera said.
In his speech from La Moneda Palace (seat of the Government), the President added that the mission of the constituents “will require grandeur, vision, wisdom and patriotism”, since they will have to reach agreements by two-thirds of the members of the convention to approve provisions.
LIMITS OF THE CONVENTION
Piñera also recalled the limits that the work of the constituents will have, which although it will have “important degrees of autonomy”, does not have among its missions to govern or legislate, tasks that correspond to the Government and the Congress.
Likewise, he stressed that the convention “could not attribute to itself the exercise of sovereignty, nor assume other attributions that have not been expressly conferred to it”.
The president thus responded to the call made last week by a group of constituents to “make effective the popular sovereignty” of the convention and not to adjust to the limits established for its work in the agreement of the political forces in November 2019 that initiated the constituent process.
COMPOSITION OF THE BODY
The 155 constituents elected to the Convention represent diverse political, social, cultural, and ethnic sectors of the country, with people without a history of affliiation to traditional political parties making up the largest bloc within the body (48).
In the opinion of experts, the surprise success of the independents in the May constituent elections was the final ratification of the deep crisis of representativeness suffered by Chile’s traditional political parties.
The divided center and left opposition have 53 seats between their two blocs, while the ruling right-wing has 37. In addition, there are 17 seats reserved for indigenous peoples: seven for the Mapuche people, two for the Aymara people and one each for the Kawésqar, Rapa Nui, Yagán, Quechua, Atacameño, Diaguita, Colla and Chango.
The work of the Executive during the process will be to provide technical, administrative, and financial support for the installation and operation of the Constitutional Convention.
The current Chilean Constitution dates back to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). It is considered by some sectors as the straitjacket that sustains the country’s neoliberal system, which led it to be the target for change during the social protests of recent years to move towards a social welfare state.
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