Chile’s constitutional conference on Monday passed its draft new constitutional charter to President Gabriel Boric ahead of a referendum scheduled for September on adopting the text.
The convention, composed of 154 members who are mostly independent politicians, spent a year creating the new document to update the charter followed under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
“We deserve to be proud that in the innermost crisis . . . for decades that our country has gone through, Chileans have chosen more democracy, not less,” Boric said in a rite in Santiago.
Rewriting the dictatorship-era letter, a main call from protesters who took to the streets in 2019 and held weekly protests for months before the coronavirus pandemic interrupted them.
Outside the ceremony, supporters of the constitutional replacement waved Chilean flags and those of the Mapuches, the country’s largest indigenous community.
In the first of the 388 articles of the new constitution, Chile is described as “a social and democratic rule of law,” as “plurinational, intercultural and ecological. “
“Regardless of the date of the referendum, Chile has already changed,” said the convention’s vice president, Gaspar Dominguez.
But with only 37 seats out of 154 at the constitutional convention, which will now be dissolved, the political right is in the minority.
If the charter is approved, Chile will become one of the most progressive countries in the region.
“It’s a letter from another era. I am absolutely convinced that if it is approved, when we think about this procedure again. . . we will see it with much more tenderness and affection than now,” and journalist Patricio Fernández. , one of the 104 independent members of the convention, told AFP.
One of the members, Natividad Llanquileo, an activist with Chile’s largest indigenous group, the Mapuche, said the constitutional procedure represented “the maximum democratic space we have known in the history of this country. “
At several events in recent weeks, Boric has reiterated his support for the constitutional project, adding that the existing document represents an “obstacle” to deep social reform.
At Monday’s ceremony, Boric warned of “lies, distortions or catastrophic interpretations that are alien to reality” in the run-up to the referendum.
However, he predicted that the next two months will be “very polarized. “
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Originally as Chilean president receives draft constitution