Results of the plebiscite in Chile were positive – Latin America – International

Chile is the only country in the world where water is private, that is, companies literally own this resource, whose use is recognized internationally as a right of life. However, that reality and many others that are supported by the Constitution of Chile will remain in the past. Chileans voted yes to the change of the Constitution drawn up in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

(In context: Chile voted to change the Pinochet Constitution)

The vote in favor of changing the Constitution led widely, until late at night this Sunday, with 78 percent, the count of the exciting election day, according to partial official results with more than 60 percent of the votes counted.

The count began once the tables were closed at eight in the evening, local time (six in the afternoon, Colombian time), and In just one hour the advantage of ‘Approve’ over ‘Rejection’ was already confirmed. After the trend showed that the ‘approved’ was the winner of the plebiscite, President Sebastián Piñera spoke and highlighted: “This is a triumph for all Chileans who love democracy, unity and peace”, and He added: “I call for unity to face the great challenges of the future. And I ask my compatriots to rise to this historic challenge ”.

Piñera also said: “For this constituent process to bear fruit, all men of good will must give the best of ourselves, practice respect and tolerance, be willing to agree and reject violence.” And it is that at the end of the day there were some confrontations between hooded men and the police.

(Read also: Why is the plebiscite vote in Chile historic?)

He also asked that, after finishing the day, people calmly return to their homes and that they take care of their health.

In addition to choosing between ‘Approve’ and ‘Rejection’, voters also defined the body that will draft the eventual new Constitution: a Mixed Convention, composed of 172 members, distributed in equal parts between elected citizens and sitting parliamentarians, or a Constitutional Convention , of 155 members, in which all its members must be popularly elected. At the close of this edition, the Constitutional Convention obtained 78.98 percent (1,254,856 votes) and the Mixed Constitutional Convention, 21.02 percent (333,992 votes).

More than 14.7 million Chileans were called to vote. With masks and the hope of a change, long lines were observed in the voting centers, where the process passed without incident and with the sanitary guards to avoid contagion of covid-19.

The participation rate was a key figure in an electoral appointment in the middle of a pandemic, in a country where since 2012 the vote has been voluntary. The immediate reference was the presidential one of 2017, when President Sebastián Piñera was elected, and 49.2 percent voted.

In the central Plaza Italia in Santiago, the epicenter of last year’s protests, Sebastián Llanta, a 32-year-old engineer, told AFP: “What is happening today was something impossible to imagine.”

“It is being achieved because of everything that happened a little over a year ago. It will not be magical overnight, but what happens now has to do with the contribution of all of us, “he added, before going to dance to the rhythm of They Want Money (1986), a protest song by Los Prisoners that became popular during the dictatorship (1973-1990) and that sounded on a loudspeaker.

(You may be interested in: New riots appear in Chile two days before the plebiscite)

The plebiscite has been marked by the possibility of changes that this unprecedented electoral process opens, decided after a broad political agreement reached in November last year, almost a month after the start, on October 18, 2019, of social protests and clashes violent with the Police after the rise in the rate of the Santiago metro.

The election takes place just one year after the largest march in democracy took place on October 25, 2019. More than 1.2 million people gathered around Plaza Italia in Santiago, a demonstration of the depth and breadth of social discontent accumulated over decades in a country considered a model of economic growth and stability in Latin America.

For a large sector of the population, the Constitution of 1980 is the mother of inequalities in Chile. Although the constitution does not establish the privatization of basic sectors, such as health or education, it encourages the participation of the private sector and reduces the size of the State. But for critics of the process, a change in the Constitution could undermine the health of the economy and social development.
At the end of the day, thousands of people took to the streets and gathered in the central Plaza Italia in Santiago, to celebrate the victory by shouting: “Oh, Chile woke up, Chile woke up, Chile woke up.”

‘This is a triumph of citizen mobilization’

“This is a triumph thanks to citizen mobilization, it is a triumph of the people. It belongs to all of us who have sought change since the dictatorship, and now we have achieved it,” ex-Chilean minister Carlos Fuche told EL TIEMPO with emotion.

In addition, he pointed out that the Constitution left by the dictatorship has many institutional locks that made its modification very difficult. “The coalition that led the democratic recovery was always the majority, but it was never possible for the people to express themselves in such a massive way. Now we have managed to go beyond that institutionalization… This is a moment of flexion and a source of pride and joy for the Chilean people ”.

After this result, comes a very intense electoral calendar for Chile. In April, the members of the Constitutional Convention will have to be elected, then that convention will be installed, which has nine months – and can be extended by a year – to draft a new constitution, which will be submitted to a new plebiscite. To this will be added the elections for regional governors and mayors in April, and in November will be the presidential elections.

“The schedule will be very intense. I have the hope, the conviction and the desire that this will be the starting point for progressive, democratic majorities, and that a path will be opened for the changes that Chile needs. I hope a country with greater equality ”, affirmed Fuche.

For his part, Vicente Espinoza, researcher at the Center for Conflict and Social Cohesion Studies, explained that “what comes next will be much more complex because there are still issues of the agreement to be resolved”, adding that it is not clear that the result of this plebiscite will end the wave of protests.

And the fact is that if the process that Chile has gone through is reviewed, the demand for changes has come face to face with the wall of the Constitution; however, changing this will take time, and the discontent of the people is immediate. “For example, there is a town that asks for free education, and currently what there is is an administrative decision, not a substantive one. And the real change that people want is from the base and education is to name one, here they are demanding environmental issues, social equality policies, pension changes, to name a few ”, explains the expert.
And Alberto Mayol, a sociologist at the University of Santiago de Chile, concludes by pointing out that this is a moment that marks a before and after.

(In other news: America comes to elections with extreme polarization)

“It is a stage that divides this process of crisis, the legitimacy of the Chilean economic model and the political model. This is a crisis that stems from the specific form that Chile adopted to make its political transition from dictatorship to democracy, where the weight of the military projections was obviously restricted, but where much of the legacy of the dictatorship was left and deepened in the vast majority of occasions “, and adds:” In this context, what changes in this plebiscite is the crystallization of that dictatorial project in a constitution which had not been changed and whose modification now means the end of the structuring of that economic and political model that had generated so much inequality in Chile ”.

The process that follows now for the Latin American country is long and complicated; However, and as the experts point out, the results of this plebiscite are one more step to leave behind the legacy of a bloody dictatorship.

SIMÓN GRANJA MATIAS
Sunday Writing ** With information from AFP.