Chile’s 40-year-old, dictatorship-era constitution has divided citizens into those who credit the charter with laying the foundation for robust economic growth and those who criticize it for undercutting efforts to improve social conditions.
Now, voters will decide whether to change their Magna Carta. On Sunday, Chile holds a referendum on whether to start the two-year process of writing a new constitution, which President
Sebastián Piñera
hopes will calm the country and restore the stability shattered by protests that began last year over discontent with the status quo.
At stake are the fundamental rules governing the nation of 18 million people and the future of one of Latin America’s most successful economies that is at its most tumultuous period since its return to democracy in 1990. Public trust in Chile’s institutions—from political parties to the courts—has collapsed amid violent clashes between police and protesters that started last October and picked up again just this past week. The global coronavirus pandemic has further battered Chile’s economy.
A church was set on fire during demonstrations in Santiago earlier in October.
Photo:
Pablo Rojas Madariaga/SOPA Images/Zuma Press
“Our democratic institutions are disgraced and discredited like never before,” said Andrés Velasco, a former Chilean finance minister. “I see this process almost like a new beginning, like a second birth.”
Mr. Piñera, a conservative billionaire, has said the country needs a constitution that unites Chileans while maintaining market protections, whether by writing a new one or modifying the current charter. Members of his Chile Vamos coalition are split on backing a new constitution.
Those pressing for a new constitution want a document that improves democratic accountability, provides a raft of social rights and increases the state’s role in the economy.
“We need a constitution that is legitimate and that the majority of the people in Chile feel a part of,” said Gabriel Boric, a left-wing congressman.
Business leaders and conservative politicians say the charter’s strong guarantee of property rights and rule of law have helped Chile’s economy take off and generated prosperity for millions. They worry the political left will stack the document with a costly shopping list of benefits that will force the state to overspend, a trend in other South American countries.
Latin America has a long history of rewriting constitutions, saddling governments with onerous costs in tomes that run as big as 60,000 words, compared with the original four-page U.S. constitution. Charters in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador guarantee everything from housing, social security and technological research to cultural self-identification. Brazil’s 1988...
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