Referendum: Chileans overwhelmingly rejected the proposal for a brand new Structure

The Chileans overwhelmingly rejected, on Sunday, the proposal for a brand new Structure which aimed to interchange that inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). Some 61.9% of voters, or greater than 7.8 million individuals, slipped the poll “I reject”, in opposition to 4.8 million (38.1%) in favor of the point out “I approve”, in accordance with the ultimate outcomes.

This unambiguous selection suspends, at the least quickly, the method of a brand new Structure began after the violent well-liked rebellion of 2019 demanding extra social justice.

Learn additionally: Tense poll on the draft progressive Structure in Chile

A primary referendum in October 2020 had nonetheless clearly referred to as for the drafting of a brand new elementary textual content (79%), the present Structure then being thought of as a brake on any substantive social reform. However the fruit of a yr of labor by the 154 members of a Constituent Meeting, elected in Could 2021 to draft the proposal, has apparently shaken up the conservatism of a serious a part of Chilean society.

Not all reforms shall be frozen

The proposed Structure sought to determine a gallery of latest social rights in an ultra-liberal society, with sturdy social inequalities, and supposed to ensure Chilean residents the fitting to training, public well being, retirement and a Respectable housing.

The inscription in stone of the fitting to abortion, a topic that’s debated within the nation the place abortion has solely been licensed since 2017 within the occasion of rape or hazard for the mom or the kid, or the popularity of latest rights for indigenous peoples, has tensed the usually heated debates in a marketing campaign bathed in a local weather of misinformation.

This rejection doesn’t imply the freezing of all reforms. In accordance with Cecilia Osorio, of the College of Chile, “there’s a consensus that the 1980 Structure is now not legitimate and that we should always transfer on to a different” establishing new “social, political and financial rights” .

A brand new constitutional course of to start out from scratch?

President Gabriel Boric had anticipated this setback and introduced that he would ask parliament to launch a brand new constitutional course of ranging from “zero”, with the election of a brand new constituent meeting to draft a brand new textual content.

From the presidential palace of La Moneda, he launched “an enchantment to all political forces to place Chile earlier than any reputable divergence, and to agree as quickly as attainable on the deadlines and contours’ of this new course of ‘through which, after all, parliament should be the principle protagonist’.

Celebrating the “defeat for the refounders of Chile”, Javier Macaya, president of the ultra-conservative UDI get together, stated at a press convention that he additionally needed to “proceed the constitutional course of”, because the opposition had dedicated to throughout the marketing campaign to dam the proposed textual content.

“President Boric: this defeat can also be yours,” stated far-right chief Antonio Kast, an open admirer of Pinochet, who misplaced within the second spherical of the presidential election.

Former President Michelle Bachelet, who has simply left her submit as UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, the place she voted, and who stays very fashionable in her nation, had warned that within the occasion of rejection, “the requests of Chileans will stay unhappy”.

Learn once more: In Chile, the start of the top for Pinochet’s Structure

The ‘no’ supporters, a ‘heterogeneous’ group fueled by ‘worry’

The will for change perceived overseas and within the capital Santiago, particularly amongst younger individuals, was not sufficient to reverse the sensation of rejection that the textual content impressed “within the south and north of the nation”, in accordance with Marta Lagos , sociologist and founding father of the Mori polling institute. In accordance with her, the “no” supporters type a “very heterogeneous” group with a powerful “populist” fiber fueled by the “worry” of being dispossessed.

These two areas are experiencing severe issues of violence and insecurity. Within the south, as a result of conflicts over land claimed by radical indigenous Mapuche teams and, within the north, because of the inflow of migrants, issues of poverty and human trafficking.