Chileans to replace constitution
Chile’s most important political parties have agreed to call for a new constitution to replace one imposed by a military dictatorship almost 40 years ago, a move that follows a month of turbulent social protests in the streets.
The agreement calls for an April 2020 referendum asking Chileans who should draft the document: the existing Congress, or a new group made up of legislators and specially elected citizens.
The agreement was reached yesterday, after 29 days of demonstrations that began with a protest over subway fares and expanded into a mass movement against inequality that has shaken the nation. At least 25 people have died and thousands have been injured.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the pact would pacify the hundreds of thousands of Chileans who have taken to the streets in recent weeks.
Those drafting the new constitution would start ‘‘with a blank sheet’’, said Socialist congressman Marcelo Diaz.
A broad swath of the centre and left of Chile’s political spectrum has long demanded scrapping or making major changes to the 1980 constitution imposed by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Pinochet’s government killed or tortured thousands of suspected leftists while imposing a rigid free-enterprise model that privatised a large share of social services such as health care, pensions and education, an approach embedded in the constitution.
Under the constitution, changes to laws on health, education and many other areas require passage by a supermajority, making it easy for a conservative minority to block reforms.
Claudia Heiss of the Public Affairs Institute at the University of Chile said the 1980 constitution irked many Chileans because it was initially imposed after a fraudulent referendum and its contents ‘‘were never either proposed or ratified democratically by the Chilean people’’.
While Chile’s overall economy has boomed under the 1980 constitution, high levels of poverty plague a seemingly prosperous nation.