Chile Searching for Constitution

In the 2020 referendum, 78% of the Chilean population approved the text of the new constitution. It replaced the existing one, considered neoliberal, promulgated in 1980, during the military dictatorship, and only partially reformed after the re-democratization.

In September 2022, in another referendum, 62% of the population rejected the proposed text of the new constitution, as it was considered too progressive and leftist. Now, in December 2023, 56% of the public also rejected the new text proposal, which is considered overly conservative and right-wing.

What will happen to the Chileans? Don’t people know what they want? Are the politicians incompetent? Looking at the history of this constitutional mess, the failure of politicians is evident, as is their inability to understand and respond to what the Chilean people have been asking for from the beginning.

In October 2019, more than 1.2 million people protested in the streets of the capital Santiago, denouncing the many social problems faced by the population. The crackdown on the protest left 29 people dead. About 2500 were injured, and 2840 were arrested.

Although Chile has a Human Development Index (HDI) that is considered very high and one of the highest in Latin America, the country suffers from high social inequality like most nations on the continent. In this context, the government’s neoliberal social policy, with a high degree of privatization of services, has not met the expectations of the population on very relevant issues, leaving a large part of Chileans in a situation of social insecurity.

Shortly before the 2019 protests, according to polls, the priorities highlighted by the public were listed as follows: pensions (64% of respondents), health care (46%), education (38%), wages (27%), and crime (26%). Only 9% of Chileans were interested in a new constitution.

In 2021, polls confirmed these orientations. However, the vast majority of the population was convinced that a new Constitution could be the way to solve the problems. Then the left decided it was time to give Chile the most progressive and socially oriented Constitution in Latin America. But the voters decided otherwise. Among the most controversial points of the proposal, approved by Constituents and rejected in a popular referendum, were the expansion of rights recognized for indigenous peoples and the State’s obligation to guarantee women conditions for abortion.

The new proposal written by the new team, this time from the right, was a kind of backlash against the previous proposal. Abortion has become more difficult, the neoliberal vision of welfare and social security systems has been strengthened (insisting on one of the points that led to the 2019 protests), and the right to strike has been curtailed. The result: the proposal was again rejected.

In short, a specific social problem, undoubtedly complex and difficult, but quite definite in the perception of society, has turned into an arena of confrontation between extremist vanguards from both sides of the political spectrum. They are more interested in defending their position than in proposing effective solutions to existing problems.

Solving social problems in a completely realistic, objective, and rational way may be an unattainable ideal in practice. But extreme ideological shortsightedness excludes the possibility of dialog and consensus and does not allow to reach minimal solutions, with serious losses both for those who have strengthened their positions and for society as a whole.

It’s a sad lesson that is not new, but one that we are being taught again. This time by the Chilean people.