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Chileans have voted to reject a new constitution drafted by rightwing political parties, leaving the existing version in place and marking the failure of a four-year effort to rewrite the charter in what is a deeply polarised country.
With more than 90 per cent of votes counted at Sunday’s referendum, 55.7 per cent of voters chose not to adopt the new text and 44.3 per cent voted in favour. The result comes just over a year after Chileans rejected a radical proposal drafted by leftists and independents by a 24-point margin.
The 2023 draft was more conservative on some points than Chile’s existing pro-business constitution. That was adopted in 1980 under dictator Augusto Pinochet, though it was later thoroughly reformed.
It included articles that would have protected the private sector’s role in health, pensions and education, promoted the expulsion of undocumented migrants and limited the right to strike only to those workers who engage in collective negotiations.
Approval would have been a defeat for Chile’s leftist president Gabriel Boric, who had championed the 2022 proposal. Rightwing politicians had framed Sunday’s vote as a referendum on Boric’s presidency, which has been challenged by a corruption scandal.
Chile’s leaders began rewriting the constitution in late 2019 following mass protests over inequality and the cost of living. Demonstrators and many politicians declared the Pinochet-era document illegitimate.
But politicians have since struggled to overcome increasing polarisation to produce a charter acceptable to a majority of Chileans. Uncertainty stemming from the process has hurt Chile’s economy, which will shrink by 0.1 per cent this year, according to the OECD.
Politicians have also failed to approve major legislative reforms to tackle the social discontent that fuelled the protests, analysts say. Boric‘s coalition lacks a majority in congress and rightwing parties have blocked his plan to increase taxes to fund increased social spending and overhaul the pension system.
The 51-seat body that wrote the new proposal, chosen at elections following the defeat of the 2022 effort, was dominated by the far-right Republicanos party and the mainstream conservative Chile Vamos coalition. They had 22 and 11 seats, respectively.
Many articles were approved without support from the 17 leftwing councillors or an independent indigenous representative who held one seat.
Leftwing leaders condemned articles cutting taxes on expensive properties, reducing state oversight of school curriculums, and modifying language on “the right to life of the unborn”. They said the latter changes could trigger legal challenges to the limited exceptions that exist to Chile’s abortion ban.
Both Boric and the parties that make up his coalition have pledged not to launch a new rewrite process, though they may seek reforms to some parts of the constitution, according to Kenneth Bunker, a politics professor at Santiago’s San Sebastián University.
“There is a hope that this will be the final nail in the coffin of the wider constitutional debate, and that we can get back on the path to growth and [gradual] development that we were on,” he said. “But for now we are stuck exactly where we were four years ago.”
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