approves the reform with 78% – Corriere.it

It is the end of the Pinochet era. With more than 78% of the votes, voters in Chile voted for a new Constitution. A plebiscite, therefore. According to the data released overnight by the Electoral Service, after a day of long queues at the polling stations, 78.24% of those entitled – with 90.78% of the ballots counted – vote to change the Constitution , considered by its critic in the origin of the socioeconomic disparities of the country. Against 21.76% of the voters.

Local television stations broadcast images of crowds celebrating in Santiago. Chileans have freely expressed their will, Conservative President Sebastián Piñera said last night. An atmosphere decidedly different from that of a year ago, when the squares and streets of Santiago and the other large cities of the country were filled almost daily with protesters who accused the Chilean economic and social model, and especially the Constitution that inspires it. The police, and in particular the carabinieri, responded to the protests using force. The balance was 36 dead and hundreds injured, including 460 with eye damage, up to complete blindness.. A cloak of oppression that therefore recalled the days of the dictatorship. It is no coincidence that about ten days ago Sergio Micco, president of the National Institute of Human Rights of Chile, presented a report in which 2,520 human rights violations committed by the police and the military were registered.

The 1980 Constitution was drawn up and approved during the dictatorship without the slightest electoral guarantees and, according to political scientists, a text that contemplates a particular power structure, with a strong presidentialism and an important space for the market economy. But now Chile changes. In a second question, the Chileans have decided that the new Charter will be drawn up by an assembly elected from scratch with a guarantee of equitable representation among the gener.i: hypothesis preferred by more than 79% of voters compared to that of a working group made up of 50% of parliamentarians for the current term. A certain number of seats will be reserved for indigenous peoples, although the Chilean Congress has not yet determined how many. Assembly proposals must be approved by a two-thirds majority. Among the issues that could figure prominently in the new text are the recognition of the Mapuche indigenous population, la review of collective bargaining agreements, the reform of the private health, education and pension system. For the second semester of 2022 a new referendum will be held that must approve or reject the text of the new Constitution.

After voting, the head of state Piñera made an urgent appeal to the voters to do the same. Then he explained the decision not to reveal his election: In my government – he recalled – there are ministers who are to approve and others to reject, But everyone agrees that the day is celebrated in a way that honors our democratic tradition. But it’s hard to forget that the Conservative government agreed to hold the referendum only after a wave of protests whose images have been around the globe. And that for so many days, too many, they remembered those lived during one of the fiercest dictatorships the world has known.