“Chile opens a path that other peoples of America and the world will be able to follow.” The phrase was uttered by Salvador Allende on September 4, 1970, the day he won the presidential elections in Chile.
Half a century later, it could be repeated word for word on a similar date: September 4, 2022, when the “exit” referendum –as it is known in these southern lands– of the first Chilean democratic constitution will be held.
It hasn’t been an easy process. No democratic process is.
While the agreed Constitutions are negotiated by a few men in private offices or in the private rooms of luxury restaurants, democratic ones require consensus, dialogue, respect and, in particular, time.
In the case of Chile, time was undoubtedly an obstacle.
It may seem that one year, which will finally be the term used by the Constitutional Convention, is a long time to write a Constitution, but it is certainly not when, for the first time, all social sectors in the country come together to listen first and then approve.
As soon as the Chilean Constituent was formed, an important part of the time was devoted to receiving proposals, listening to suggestions and listening to people, and now it is in the process of agreement and approval.
Everything must be ready for the delivery of the draft Constitution to the President of the Republic within three months.
To this we must add the elements that are permeating the constituent process.
First, the great plurality represented in the Convention, which is nothing more than the translation of the diversities of a society like the Chilean one.
The Constituent Assembly is parity, diverse, includes ideologically opposed sectors and is formed mostly by women and men who come from social movements and who had little or no trajectory in political parties.
It should be borne in mind that the constituency incorporates the native peoples through the so-called “reserved seats”. Never before had anything like this happened in Chile.
Mapuches, Aymaras, Rapa Nui, Atacameños, Diaguitas… indigenous peoples who had never been heard from are now participating in the drafting of a new Constitution. “They were always there, but we didn’t see them”, comments a conventional in a low tone.
In fact, they were already there long before Chile’s modernization processes that excluded and made the indigenous peoples invisible.
Now they have the opportunity to argue from their chairs; they speak in committees, raise their voices in plenary and put on the table concepts as advanced as the recognition of plurinationality or the consideration of nature as a subject of rights.
Second, the Chilean constituent procedure is, as a guarantee, enormously long in terms of time and form.
When they drafted the regulatory norms for the functioning of the Convention, the objective was to ensure that there was not a single vestige of discretion and that the topics could be discussed repeatedly.
The agreements in commission are not enough, everything is susceptible to being debated repeatedly in the different bodies of the Constituent Assembly through “indications” and private approvals.
To this we must add a not insignificant circumstance: the need to be a reinforced quorum, the two thirds of the plenary, which has the capacity to grant the last word in the approval.
This was a great battle if a minority of the Convention were determined to boycott the Constituent Assembly, as they would always have the ability to veto any approval by the majority.
But, on the other hand, the two-thirds served to broaden the spectrum of agreements, seek proposals between different ideologically distant groups and, in short, to draft a more consensual Constitution.
I don’t think I’m wrong if I say that Rousseau would be very happy with the procedure (I don’t know if so much with the result).
Third, if something has characterized the Chilean constituent process, in addition to being deeply democratic, it has been its ability to innovate.
Not only in the very generation of debates that take place at the Convention’s headquarters, the former Congress building, between Morandé and Bandera streets, one block from the always busy Plaza de Armas, in Santiago, and a step away from La Moneda, but also in terms of Chilean constitutional history, which in its two centuries of life had never experienced anything like it.
The new Constitution would mean a legal revolution necessary for the social transformation that the Chilean people constantly demand, and which had its most visible expression in the “social explosion” of October 2019, the day Santiago burned.
Finally, there is a date for the Chilean people to decide on the current and future generations: September 4th. Voting will be mandatory, so a large turnout is expected.
Chileans will be able to decide whether to maintain the Pinochetist Constitution of 1980 or move towards a supreme norm with deep democratic roots. Some unflattering polls herald the victory of disapproval.
Therefore, bets are accepted; I already put mine and I probably won’t be wrong.
