Chile’s new Constitution could look a lot like the old one after Kast’s victory

The new constitution Chilean law could end up looking a lot like the current one, approved during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochetbut having a democratic origin, since the right will lead the process of writing a new text after its electoral victory on Sunday, another heavy defeat for the president gabriel boric.

He Republican Partyled by the hard-right leader Jose Antonio Kast who has openly defended the military regime, obtained more than a third of the votes in the elections on Sunday in which the editors who will write the new constitutiona sharp change from the left-majority that led the first and failed attempt.

LOOK HERE: This is not cool anymore. Chronicle of Fernando Vivas with some secrets about Venezuelan migration

A victory for the right could set the stage for a similar conservative rewrite of the highly market-oriented original text, which has been singled out for fueling decades of strong economic growth in the copper nation but criticized for favoring social inequality, one of the reasons that sparked months of protests in 2019.

For the right the current moment is “the best of both worlds”, said the political analyst Patrick Naviaof the new york university. “let people choose Pinochet’s Constitution without Pinochet’s signature”.

“If it includes some improvements and demands from the left, we will have a Constitution very similar to Pinochet’s, but signed by gabriel boric and ministers of communist party (part of the ruling coalition)”, he added.

Boric, a former student protest leader, came to power in March last year with a hopeful mandate for reform, pledging to support planned progressive changes to the constitution. But that process ended in failure in September, when voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal.

This time, voters seem to be more focused on restoring economic stability and dealing with inflation, alarmed by issues such as the rise in crime or the effects of irregular immigration, rather than radical social change.

“The political climate today in Chili It is no longer the same as in 2019 or 2020″, said the political analyst Christopher Bellolio. “It seemed that the Chileans wanted great transformations and now it seems that they do not want to take any risk, that they want to reduce uncertainty”.

All of this has paved the way for far-right politicians like Kast, a lawyer who lost the runoff to Boric in the 2021 presidential election, who maintains a tough line on crime and the like.

Kast’s party won 23 of the 50 seats in the new Constitutional Councilwhile a separate coalition of traditional right-wing parties, which also supported the dictatorship but over the years have tried to break away from that heritage, won 11 seats.

The coalition of the ruling leftist parties, on the other hand, only won 16 seats.

MORE INFORMATION: Who is José Antonio Kast, the leader of the far-right party that won the constitutional elections in Chile?

With a required three-fifths majority to approve and include the new articles in the draft, the right could push the contents on its own since it will add 34 constitutional advisers.

Analysts said, however, that the right would likely agree to some changes to appease voters, including in areas such as social rights or indigenous recognition, among several others.

“If the Constitution proposal is more to the right than Pinochet’s Constitution, the people will reject it”, Navia said, adding that the result left Boric very hurt and far from the image of a leader who in the campaign promised to bury the Chilean free market model.

“Boric said that Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism and would also be its grave. Neoliberalism is still very healthy and Boric is in the hospital, in the ICU”.

The defeat for the government comes shortly after Boric presented his ambitious proposal to increase state control over strategic lithium projects and create a new national company to exploit the white metal. The plan already faces technical and political challenges, as part of the initiative must be approved by congress.

The government has also had difficulty advancing a comprehensive tax reform, key to furthering other social goals, which was rejected by lawmakers.

Rossana Castiglioniteacher of Political Sciences in the Diego Portales University in Chile, she said she was surprised by the low support for centrist parties and the high number of null and blank votes, which is a lesson for other progressive leaders and governments in the region.

Sunday’s vote was mandatory participation.

ALSO SEE: “It is a paradox: those who were against the constituent process have the opportunity to write the constitution they want”

“The supports are sometimes ephemeral. It is not enough to win an election, what happens between elections is very important”, said the academic, noting that the current economic landscape is very different from that of the previous leftist wave in Latin America during the commodity boom of the early 2000s.

“The lesson is that there must also be processes of strategic adaptation on the part of the left if it intends to win the elections in contexts in which it must face an economy that is more adverse.”, he added.

Source: Elcomercio

jack

I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.