Chilean voters on Sunday rejected a proposed new constitution drafted by a conservative-led committee, election officials said, meaning the charter imposed during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet would remain in force.
With 99 percent of referendum ballots counted, the “against” option prevailed with 55.75 percent of the vote, compared to 44.25 percent in favor, electoral service Servel said just hours after voting ended at about 6pm.
Four years after Chile launched its constitutional reform process in response to massive protests that broke out in 2019, and following two failed draft efforts, the nation is back at square one.
Photo: AFP / Chilean Presidency
The latest version of a new proposed constitution was overseen by the far-right opposition Republican Party after voters in September last year roundly rejected a progressive draft that attempted to enshrine environmental protections and the right to elective abortion.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric last month said that this would be his last attempt to reform the constitution, in order to focus on stability and long-term development, and on Sunday he reiterated that message.
“With this — during this mandate — the constitutional process is closed. There are other urgent matters,” Boric said at La Moneda, the presidential palace.
“Our country will continue with the current constitution, because after two plebiscites on proposed constitutions, neither managed to represent or unite Chile in its beautiful diversity,” added the president, who had supported the first proposal overseen by the left, but remained neutral in the second effort.
The process to rewrite the 1980 constitution, adopted under the Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship, began as a bid to ease mass protests that broke out in 2019 against social inequality.
In a 2020 referendum, 80 percent voted for replacing the constitution.
However, in the years since, enthusiasm has been dampened by the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and economic stagnation, a growing sense of insecurity and voter fatigue.
“There is not much spirit, as this is an exhausting process,” information technology worker Nicolas Mora, 29, said after voting.
Paulina Salas, a 56-year-old homemaker, said she hopes that after this vote Chile can return to calm.
There is a need for “stability, that people can go back to work, to have safety with regard to their job and everyday life,” Salas said.
The opposition presented the vote as a referendum on Boric, who in 2021 rode the wave of public discontent to be elected Chile’s youngest-ever leader at 35.
Boric, whose approval rating has plummeted to about 30 percent, had already suffered a setback in May when Chile’s far-right Republican Party came in first in a nationwide vote to choose the members of the constitution rewrite committee, but Republican Party leader Jose Antonio Kast said “there is nothing to celebrate” in Sunday’s results.
“We failed in the effort to convince Chileans that this would be a better constitution than the existing one,” he said, adding that “the government and the left cannot celebrate either.”
The 1980 constitution is widely blamed for allowing companies and the elite to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor, working classes.
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