Constitutional council experts selected
Feb. 2, 2023
On January 11, Chile’s Congress approved a new effort to redraft its magna carta: a 50-member elected Constitutional Council guided by a panel of 24 experts appointed by Congress. (AFP)
Elections for the council will be held in May, and political parties are determining their candidates, who must be formalized by Sunday. (El País)
Former President Michelle Bachelet is a potential candidate for the council, and hopes to represent a unified list for the governing coalition. (El Mostrador)
The experts, who were appointed between the Senate and the House of Representatives, will begin work in March. Analysts signal that politics seems to have trumped expertise in the selection process, reports El Mostrador. (See the full list of experts and their profiles here and here.)
“The consensus seems to be that the new constitutional agreement takes into account some of the excesses of the previous process, providing some limits to the upcoming discussions,” writes Robert Funk in Americas Quarterly. “Because the agreement emerged from cross-party discussions, these limits may be considered as a minimum consensus — almost a social contract — regarding what Chile’s institutional structure ought to look like.”
The structure of the council is such that “the convention deliberates with a leash, straitjacket and chaperones making sure that it will not go rogue,” Patricio Navia told Americas Quarterly. Expect ”a dull document, as constitutions normally are.”
Most Chileans, 54.8%, have little faith in the new constitutional process, though 49% remain convinced that the current magna carta should be changed, and 42% are interested in the new process, according to the latest Cadem poll. (CNN Chile)
More Chile News
Chile’s government rejected the controversial $2.5 billion iron and copper mining Dominga project proposed in an area important for biodiversity and marine life. A ministerial committee found that the plan for an open-pit mine, processing and desalination plants, did not include sufficient efforts to mitigate the impact on nearby reserves, which are home to bottlenose dolphins, several species of whale and the Humboldt penguin, reports the Guardian.
"We are confident that a robust, traceable, evidence-based (decision) has been adopted here," said Chilean Environmental Minister Maisa Rojas. The project has a controversial political history in Chile, reports AFP.
Chile, famed for its investor-friendly policies, has kept its lithium industry under strict government control, limiting the role of the private sector, writes Patricia I. Vásquez, a global fellow in the Wilson Center’s Latin American Program in a new report.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signed a new, expanded commodities partnership with Chile, aimed at intensifying cooperation in the sector. "We want to help Chile on the way to a sustainable mining sector," Scholz said in a news conference with President Gabriel Boric. (Reuters)
Inflation and crime have decimated Boric’s popularity, his approval rating has halved from around 50 percent when he came into office last March, to 28 percent, according to the latest Cadem poll. (CNN Chile)
The country, one of the region's most stable historically, saw murders rise 43% in 2022 and kidnappings go up 77%, according to police data. (Reuters)
Boric’s proposal for pension reform passed in the Chamber of Deputies’ Labor Commission, the first step for an ambitious plan that would replace the current dictatorship-era private pension system with a private-public social security system that would see new contributions from employers and the state. (Bloomberg Línea, Reuters)
Chile’s copper production will grow at a slower rate this decade than initially forecast, as delays hit mining projects, reports Reuters.
At January’s CELAC leaders’ summit in Buenos Aires, Boric criticized state repression of protesters in Peru, where more than 50 people have died in clashes with security. "We cannot be indifferent when today in our sister Republic of Peru, with the government under the command of Dina Boluarte, people who go out to march, to demand what they consider fair, end up shot by whoever should defend them,” said Boric. (El País, AFP, Ámbito)
Boric also called on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to free political prisoners and for the CELAC to discuss regional approaches to migration and organized crime. (El Mostrador)