Chileans voted overwhelmingly to change their dictatorship-era constitution in a referendum on Sunday, beginning a process that could upend the political landscape in one of Latin America’s wealthiest nations amid a social backlash against the status quo.
More than 78% of Chileans voted to draft a new constitution, versus almost 22% who want to keep the same charter, according to the national election agency.
“This is historic,” said Roger Figueroa, a 32-year-old in Santiago, where thousands of people sang and waved flags in an emblematic plaza to celebrate the results. “This isn’t only a benefit for us, but for our children, grandchildren and the generations to come.”
Chile, a country of 18 million people, is now set to begin a two-year process to draft a new constitution, a period that political analysts and economists expect will be rife with uncertainty. Voters are expected to elect in April a 155-member assembly to draft the new charter, which will need to be approved in a plebiscite in 2022. Half of the newly elected delegates will be women. The writing of the constitution will coincide with next year’s presidential election.
The new constitution will replace the 1980 charter that was drafted during the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. He took power in a coup that ousted then-President Salvador Allende, a Marxist whose 1970 election and subsequent nationalizations of key industries turned Chile into a Cold War battleground.
More than 78% of Chileans voted to draft a new constitution.
Photo:
Claudio Santana/Getty Images
Chileans have long been polarized over the current constitution. While other Latin American nations have been racked by financial turmoil in recent years, many Chileans credit their charter for laying the foundation for years of stability and robust growth by providing strong protections for private property and enshrining central-bank autonomy.
But some say it is illegitimate because of its origin in a brutal dictatorship that tortured and killed thousands of leftist activists. They say it has been a straitjacket on social reforms by preventing changes to the country’s market-friendly economic model, which led to large protests last year.
“The constitution has damaged the political system,” said Claudia Heiss, a political scientist at the University of Chile. “It created a very rigid political system and disenchantment among people over the capacity for political change.”
She said a new constitution likely will expand social rights, while giving future governments more room to implement policies without worrying that the Constitutional Tribunal, the country’s top court, will strike them down as unconstitutional.
Anger with Chile’s status quo boiled over last October, when a...
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