[For the second time in less than two years, Chileans voted thumbs
down on a new national charter, and few seem to have the energy to try
again.]
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CHILE’S VOTERS REJECT A NEW, CONSERVATIVE CONSTITUTION  
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Jack Nicas
December 17, 2023
New York Times
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_ For the second time in less than two years, Chileans voted thumbs
down on a new national charter, and few seem to have the energy to try
again. _

A rally in Santiago, Chile last week against adopting a new
constitution., Cristobal Olivares for The New York Times

 

Chileans on Sunday rejected a new constitution that would have pulled
the country to the right, likely ending a turbulent four-year process
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replace their national charter with little to show for it.

Nearly 56 percent of voters rejected the proposed text, with all of
the votes counted.

It is the second time in 16 months
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Chile, the South American nation of 19 million, has rebuffed a
proposed constitution — the other was written by the left —
showing how deeply divided the nation remains over a set of rules and
principles to govern it even after four years of debate.

That debate began in 2019 after enormous protests
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a national referendum in which four out of five Chileans voted to
scrap their constitution, a heavily amended version of the 1980 text
adopted under the bloody military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto
Pinochet.

But now, after failing to agree on a new text, the nation will muddle
along with the constitution that so many had voted to replace.

President Gabriel Boric’s administration had been tied up with the
constitutional debate for two years. Andres Poblete/Associated Press

“I want to be clear: During my term, the constitutional process is
closed,” President Gabriel Boric
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a leftist who stayed out of the process, said in an address Sunday
night. “The country became polarized and divided, and despite this
conclusive result, the constitutional process failed to channel the
hopes of achieving a new constitution written for all.”

That makes the outcome of Sunday’s vote a bitter one. A process that
had once been hailed as a paragon of democratic participation
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serves instead as an example of how difficult democracy truly is,
particularly in the internet age.

“This could have been a possibility for people to believe again in
politics, in politicians — and that has not happened,” Michelle
Bachelet, a leftist former president of Chile, said in an interview
ahead of the vote. “Nobody will try to do a third version of this
process.”

Chileans twice elected mostly political outsiders — doctors,
engineers, lawyers, farmers, social workers and others — to
constitutional assemblies to draft proposed charters. But those bodies
ended up creating long, complicated constitutions that were each in
the partisan mold of the political side that controlled the assembly.

The left-leaning assembly last year offered a constitution that would
have expanded abortion rights, given Indigenous groups more
sovereignty
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enshrined a record number of rights
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including to housing, internet access, clean air and care “from
birth to death.”

After 62 percent of ballots rejected that text, voters elected
conservatives to control a new constitutional assembly. That group
came up with a proposal that would have given the private sector a
prominent role in areas like health, education and social security.

Each proposal engendered fierce opposition, and voters were
overwhelmed with complex and often contradictory information about how
the texts would change the country. Misinformation flew from both
sides.

Michelle Bachelet, the former president, said the constitutional
process had come up short of its potential to make people believe in
politics again. Cristobal Olivares for The New York Times.

Gladys Flores, 40, a street vendor, said Sunday that she was voting
against the conservative proposal “because all of our rights will be
taken away” and “our pensions will be lower.” While the proposed
text would have cemented Chile’s current pension system, which has
been criticized for meager payouts, it was unlikely to actually reduce
pension payments or significantly take away rights.

The conversation over the proposed constitutions often devolved into
debates over politics rather than policy. Leading up to Sunday’s
vote, for instance, Chile’s surging far-right Republic Party, which
had helped write the proposal, focused its pitch not on the text’s
merits, but on the idea that voting for it would punish Mr. Boric, who
has become deeply unpopular as crime rises.

Felipe Agüero, a political scientist who has studied Chile’s
transition to democracy from the military dictatorship that ruled the
country from 1973 to 1990, said that the constitutional process was
fraught because replacing the dictatorship-era charter had been put
off for so long. That has made both the left and the right eager to
capitalize on the rare chance to significantly sway the country’s
future, he said.

“They decided that we have to use this opportunity to turn things
around in a big way — that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance,”
he said. As a result, he said, “there was no interest in reaching a
broader consensus.”

Rolando Moreno, 65, a business administrator, said Sunday that he had
voted to reject the text because it was partisan. “It was
politicians who created it, and I hate politics,” he said.
“There’s not going to be any change with these kind of people.”

The conservative proposal was rejected after 62 percent of voters had
turned back a left-leaning proposal last year. Pablo Vera/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images

He said that he was tired of the constitutional process, which in four
years has required various national votes on whether to keep the
current constitution, on who should write a new text and on the two
proposed replacements.

“It’s a joke to be having to vote six, seven times in five
years,” he said. “We are not their clowns.”

Chileans’ rejection of the two proposed constitutions is highly
unusual historically. The votes represent just the 12th and 13th times
that a nation has rejected a full constitutional referendum in 181
such votes since 1789, according to research
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Zachary Elkins and Alex Hudson, American political scientists.

Besides offering a pro-market approach to governing, the proposed
constitution defeated on Sunday also included some conservative
language on social issues.

The part that attracted the most attention was a one-word change to
the current constitution’s language on “the right to life” that
many Chileans worried would be used to challenge a law allowing for
abortion in some circumstances. The left also worried that the text
would have led to laws that enabled businesses to invoke religious
beliefs to decline serving certain customers, such as gay couples and
transgender people.

The first constitutional assembly, which was controlled by the left,
garnered intense interest last year, with its sessions broadcast live.
But after its proposal was defeated, the public appeared to grow
disillusioned with the process and media coverage decreased.

“This time people are a lot more detached from the process,” said
María Cristina Escudero, a political scientist at the University of
Chile.

She said there would almost certainly not be a third attempt at a new
constitution, at least for some time.

“There is no popular will for it, no social movement from the people
to do this again,” she said. “People are tired.”

Voting in Santiago on Sunday. Pablo Vera/Agence Prance-Presse -- Getty
Images

Before Sunday’s vote, Mr. Boric’s government and politicians from
both sides said that if the proposal was rejected, they would move on.
The current constitution is deeply unpopular, largely because of its
ties to the Pinochet years, but it has been reformed roughly 50 times
over the past three decades, and legislators are likely to continue to
try to adjust it.

The rejection is a victory for Mr. Boric, whose administration has
been tied up with the debate over the constitution for its first two
years. His government has accomplished little so far, and his approval
ratings have plummeted. Had the conservative constitution been
approved, Mr. Boric would have had to work with Congress to put in
place a system of laws laid out in the text. Now, he can focus on
governing the country.

Despite the rancor over the constitution, Chile remains one of the
most stable and prosperous nations in Latin America. The country has
the region’s highest rating on the United Nations Human Development
Index, which aims to measure countries in areas like education, income
and quality of life.

Pascale Bonnefoy contributed reporting from Santiago.

_JACK NICAS [[link removed]] is the Brazil
bureau chief for The Times, based in Rio de Janeiro, where he leads
coverage of much of South America._

* Chile
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* Constitution
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* voting
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