Chile's Constitutional Convention 2.0
Dec. 7, 2022
Three months after Chilean voters rejected a proposed magna carta drafted by an elected Constitutional Convention, the country’s politicians are muddling towards an agreement for a new Constitutional Convention.
President Gabriel Boric has urged the country’s political parties to reach an accord by the end of the week, though it’s unclear if they will do so. (CNN Chile)
While Boric’s governing leftist coalition supports a fully elected convention, right wing parties are pushing for a mixed body, that would be half elected delegates and half appointed by political parties based on their strength in Congress. The form in which delegates might be elected is also up for debate. (El País)
Boric maintains that Chile needs a new constitution — though voters rejected the draft earlier this year, the underlying demands that led to the reform effort remain unaddressed, he said, last month. Boric rejected proposals that the new drafting commission should be exclusively by appointment, saying that elected delegates would give the process more democratic legitimacy. (Radio Udec, El Mostrador)
Voters seem to agree: 64 percent of Chileans want a new constitution, while 53% want delegates to be elected and for the process to last only six months, according to a Cadem poll.
Chile’s constitutional debate has been maliciously hijacked since the plebiscite by opponents of reform, wrote Yasna Musa in a recent Post Opinión piece. Voters’ rejection of the proposed draft is not a blank check to skip “a deep discussion on the socioeconomic model or the type of country we imagine. … Making of this historic opportunity just a superficial debate, without questioning the structure that led the country to a deep crisis and that today has it plunged into a kind of paralysis, does nothing more than push the efforts to stay with the same.”
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Former Uruguayan President José Mujica met with Boric in Santiago, and told Chileans that “a stumble is not a fall,” in relation to the failed constitutional plebiscite. (CNN Chile)
Providencia Mayor Evelyn Matthei is the de facto leader of Chile’s right at the moment, a shift towards a more moderate right-wing compared to last year’s far-right presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, reports Americas Quarterly.
Chile and Bolivia have resolved their dispute over the Silala river, a waterway both claimed rights to. The International Court of Justice ruled dispute yesterday, the case was brought by Chile in 2016, but concluded that in the interim both sides reached an agreement that “it is an international watercourse.” (Associated Press, Deutsche Welle)