looks like a constitutional blooper. The constituent assembly members elected in 2021 to give a new fundamental law to Chile, will remain in history but in a hilarious chapter. Although the rules established for replace the magna carta left by the dictatorship were quite particular, it is surprising that a constitutional process that had been approved by eighty percent of the voters, led to a failed constitution because it was overwhelmingly rejected at the polls. as if it were a cyclothymic society that one day he wants to change everything, and shortly after abruptly backs down.
By the way, that there is no precedent in the world is also due to the fact that governments normally promulgate the constitutions drawn up by the constituent assemblies without subjecting them to approval or disapproval through a plebiscite. Chile called to decide at the polls whether or not to change the Constitution, then the composition of the Constituent Assembly and, finally, the approval or rejection of the new Magna Carta. The result in this last stretch is what is disconcerting.
The question is if such a backlash is the symptom of a social pathology, a sign of this time or on the contrary, it is a sign of ability to admit a risky drift and correct it before it leads to a shipwreck. Another question that floated in Chile is how the government will overcome a defeat so few months after taking office. Will Gabriel Boric be able to reset his presidency?
Although the plebiscite had a catastrophic result for him and before the vote the polls already showed a erosion of the image of the young presidentfrom the time he campaigned for the nomination in the primaries of his political space until the fateful evening of Sunday, Boric has shown signs of intelligence, lucidity and pragmatism.
Intelligence is not synonymous with lucidity, but the Chilean president is intelligent and lucid. In other words, he can understand the reason for what happened and have the reaction to take appropriate measures to correct the course. Gabriel Boric perceived the problem as soon as the work of the constituent assembly was presented in public. Excessive features were visible to the naked eye. They were the logical consequence of the overrepresentation of certain sectors to the detriment of others that were underrepresented in the body that drafted the new Magna Carta.
Perceiving these excesses, Boric began in June to clarify that, after being approved in the plebiscite, the new constitution would be subjected to several corrections. What he did by repeating that clarification like a broken record was to ask Chileans to vote “approved” because he committed himself to the subsequent necessary corrections. He did not work for him, perhaps because it was too late or because the majority of Chileans did not want to run the risk that the future of the country would depend on the fulfillment of an electoral campaign promise launched in a state of panic due to what the polls were saying.
The constituents who drafted the fundamental law massively rejected at the polls, will remain in history as authors of a constitutional excess. The 388 articles spread over 170 pages would have made it one of the most voluminous and ornate constitutions in the world. Its more than one hundred fundamental rights, with some that could have been extravagant for many, accentuated the aspect of legal monstrosity.
In many respects it was an advanced constitution and a model progress for other societies that aspire to more inclusion and equity. For example, it is positive avant-garde to include the acceptance of realities such as neurodiversity and guarantee “neurodivergent people their right to an autonomous life and to freely develop their personality and identity”.
The word neurodiversity may sound strange, but taking this step would mean moving towards a more inclusive and understanding society. The same as constitutionally guaranteeing a woman’s right to decide about her body. Also the right of access to health and education systems that encompass much more than the restricted existing systems, as well as other rights that are not necessarily extravagant because they are new.
The problem is that the election of constituents, because it was a voluntary vote and in a pandemic, established an assembly with over-represented sectors and under-represented sectors. The left, the anti-system independents and those related to radical indigenism were over-represented, while center, center-right and right were underrepresented.
For fear of contagion of the virus, the bulk of older people did not go to elect constituents, but in the plebiscite, with the pandemic under control and the mandatory vote, the statistic was reversed at the polls overwhelmingly. What most influenced the vote was the consecration of a multinational state with autonomies that would cast doubt on the very existence of Chile.
Is an advance the recognition of native peoples and the right to their ancestral cultures. But the level of autonomy established in the new Magna Carta, superimposing original legal systems on the Chilean legal system, could dilute the central state. Those were the excesses that Boric had pledged to correct, but they reveal over-representations that delegitimize the composition of the constituent assembly.
Boric’s government received a tremendous blow, but the first reaction of the president shows that he was not groggy. Instead of denying the result, relativizing it or attributing it to media conspiracies, as populist leaders usually do when they are defeated, the president of Chile recognized the result, described it as forceful, took responsibility for the failure and summoned everyone parties to a dialogue to find a way to create a new constitution but that, unlike the rejected one, it proportionally reflects the whole of society, without over-represented ideological sectors, as occurs with the fundamental law that Pinochet left behind and also with the failed Magna Carta that the constituents drafted.
the traumatic experience could alienate Boric from the radical wing of his coalition, bringing it closer to the center-left that has already governed Chile, and with great success. Not to give up the construction of a society with more inclusion and less inequality, but to advance towards those goals with more common sense than ideologies.
