Chile’s Constituent Assembly Brief

Chile’s Constituent Assembly kicked off last Sunday marked by the problems, tensions – and hopes – that have pushed the country towards a new charter. The inauguration was delayed when security forces clashed with protesters outside, prompting demands by delegates for "repressive" special forces police to be withdrawn.

Delegates selected Elisa Loncón, an Indigenous Mapuche university professor to lead the process. She won the first selection round, but failed to obtain the necessary 78 votes required to win outright. In the second round of voting, Loncón an activist for Mapuche educational and linguistic rights, was picked by 96 of 155 delegates who make up the constitutional body. 

“This convention will transform Chile into a plurinational Chile, a multicultural Chile,” said Loncón, who has a degree in English, a PhD in literature and also teaches Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche.

Next Steps

The convention will have nine months, extendable to 12 months, to draft the new constitution. The new constitution will be subsequently approved or rejected in a national plebiscite.

Having selected a president, delegates must now agree on bylaws to govern the drafting process, including what quorum will be required for voting, how long delegates will have to speak, and how citizen participation will work.

A UNDP analysis of other countries’ constitutional processes found varied timelines: from 10 days in Colombia (1991) to seven months in Bolivia (2006). There is no timeframe for Chilean delegates to agree on procedures.

The Convention must recognize certain ground rules – the final text must be approved by two-thirds of delegates; the new constitution must respect Chile’s democratic republic character, international conventions signed by the country, and jurisprudence.

Indigenous Rights

Indigenous rights and representation will be a key issue for delegates, and has been in the lead up to the drafting process. Indigenous delegates denounced that the government is not collaborating with their cultural requirements -- space for ceremonial companions and rituals, representation of their tribal flags, and translation to Indigenous languages of the Constituent proceedings.

Indigenous Aymara and Mapuche delegates did hold spiritual ceremonies before the Constituent Assembly inauguration, but say the government has failed to show capacity for multicultural dialogue.

There have been growing calls to recognize Chile’s Indigenous tribes within the constitution, since the country’s return to democracy, and some analysts say the new charter could even make Chile a plurinational state with degrees of autonomy. The issue has broad interest among convention delegates, Plataforma Contexto found that more than 70 percent included plurinationality among issues that should be included in the constitution.

(LaBot Constituyente, Reuters, Al Jazeera, El Mostrador, Bloomberg, La Voz de Maipú, El Mostrador, La Bot, Ex-Ante, Ciper)