Chile will stay with the Constitution inherited from Pinochet. For the second time in just over a year, the Chilean electorate rejected the reform of the Magna Carta in a referendum, this time the proposal raised from the right. 15 months ago was the text proposed by the left after Gabriel Boric's victory in the presidential elections.
With a practically definitive 98.61 of the vote, rejection of the new proposal had prevailed by a clear 55.70%, while support for the reform stood at 44.25%. Shortly after the polls closed, various Government representatives already announced that the “against” option had been firmly imposed. Although not with the same clarity, however, with which Chileans rejected the first reform.
Chile is thus writing what will be the last chapter of a tortuous process that began with the social outbreak of 2019. That unprecedented wave of protests, which left thirty dead and thousands injured, put the then conservative government of Sebastián on the ropes. Piñera and led to a broad political pact to write a new Magna Carta to replace the current one, a historic demand from progressive sectors.
“I never thought I was going to defend Pinochet's Constitution,” declared a left-wing advisor a few months ago, a member of the body that drafted the text, where the far-right has a majority.
Boric did not openly campaign against it due to his position, although his position is not lost on anyone. The president wanted to send a message for the future and assured that the plebiscite “strengthens” democracy and that, “regardless of which option wins,” his government will focus on the “priorities of the people.”
“Beyond any outcome, it strengthens our democracy. Chile has shown a strength that we do not have to take for granted, it has shown that we channel the problems we have in society institutionally and resolve them peacefully and trusting the people,” Boric declared after voting in his native Punta Arenas. “It's not like that in all places,” he added.
For his part, the leader of the far-right Republican Party, José Antonio Kast, whose party had great influence in the drafting of the ultimately rejected text, had urged Chileans to vote en masse. “We hope that today there will be many people who cast their vote and that peace, sanity, freedom prevail, and that common sense wins,” said Kast, who in 2021 lost the presidential election to Boric.
The path traveled in the four years since the political forces agreed to promote a new Constitution has not been straight. In May 2021, Chileans voted and put the left, with a strong weight of the identity and radical wing, at the wheel of the Constitutional Convention in charge of drafting it. In December, the young Boric was elected president with the promise of political renewal. Nine months later, in September 2022, 62% of voters knocked down the constitutional proposal, focused on social, indigenous, environmental and gender rights. It was a hard setback for the Government. The headwind was confirmed in May 2023, when Chileans returned to the polls to elect the new Constitutional Council: 22 of the 50 elected members were from the Republic Party.
Boric recently assured that this second consultation would be the last attempt to reform the Constitution. Citizens have followed the process with increasing disinterest – there is talk of “constitutional fatigue” – while issues such as security raise much more concern, according to surveys.
The current Constitution was drafted during the dictatorship, but since 1989, with the beginning of the transition, it has been revised about 70 times. The most important reforms were in 2005, during the government of socialist Ricardo Lagos.
