Chile rejects second attempt to renew constitution

Chileans voted down a new conservative constitution on Sunday that was drafted to replace the country's dictatorship-era text.

With 99.65% of ballot boxes tallied, a total of 55.76% Chileans rejected the new text while 44.24% voted in favor of it.

"The country got polarized, divided," President Gabriel Boric said during a televised address.

He said the result shows the process "didn't channel the hopes of having a new constitution written by everyone."

The draft constitution was written by the far-right Republican Party, and it was the second attempt to replace the constitution written under military dictator Augusto Pinochet after Chileans also voted down a progressive text last year.

"We failed in the effort to convince Chileans that this would be a better constitution than the existing one," said Republican leader Jose Antonio Kast.

Protests sparked calls for change

The vote for potential reform came after large-scale, passionate and occasionally violent protests against inequality gripped the South American country in 2019, led primarily by young people.

The unrest kicked off a process to scrap the constitution — a move supported by 80% of voters in a 2020 referendum — which had its roots in the nation's bloody 17-year military dictatorship.

The existing constitution from 1980 was blamed for allowing large corporations and the elites to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor.

The surge in street protests also resulted in the election of the young, leftist Boric who had previously been a student activist.

Four years on from those protests, however, enthusiasm has waned, largely due to the pandemic, inflation and economic stagnation, say analysts.

The progressive proposal in 2022 included stronger protections for Indigenous rights, proposals to protect natural resources such as water, a requirement for women to hold at least half of positions in public institutions, and the right to abortion.

The conservative text that the public voted on over the weekend instead enshrined the right to life from the moment of conception and allowed for the expedited deportation of undocumented migrants.

Claudia Heiss from the University of Chile said the latest rewrite "falls between the 1980 constitution and one even more to the right."

Referendum outcome expected

The latest draft was overseen by the far-right opposition Republican Party after citizens voted against a progressive version in September 2022 that attempted to enshrine environmental protections and the right to elective abortion.

Had the new text been approved, it could have further hindered President Boric's manifesto of progressive tax and pension reforms.

Boric said he wouldn't pursue a third attempt to rewrite the constitution.

"What the citizenry is demanding is a better capacity for dialogue, of consensus, but most of all action," he said.

zc, jsi/ab (EFE, dpa, AFP, Reuters)