Santiago de Chile (EFE) ceremony in which President Gabriel Boric participated.
“This Council is installed today because we have achieved, traveling a long way, that agreements prevail and, in addition, it demonstrates our strength as a country because we are capable of putting the common good above individual interests,” said the president.
This is Chile’s second attempt in three years to draft a fundamental law, after 62% of citizens rejected a refounding constitutional proposal in a referendum last September, drawn up by a convention with a majority of the left.
“Citizens expect a collaborative process, where the different parties are capable of giving in when necessary and finding common ground in search of the best for Chile,” said Boric, who concluded his speech by assuring that the country “will do well to close this cycle”.
Conservative dominance among constituents
The composition of the new body is completely different from the previous one, with the extreme right occupying 23 of the 51 seats, which gives it the power to veto constitutional norms.
The ruling party only got 16 seats in the elections a month ago and the traditional right in Chile Vamos got 11 councillors.
The last seat is for a Mapuche activist elected in the quota reserved for indigenous peoples, while the center-left parties that governed during the transition to democracy were left out of the body.
“Let’s fight for the agreement, let’s fight for the peace of the nation. Otherwise, history will not forgive those who get carried away by passions and revenge of the past”, said Miguel Litín, the first counselor to take office and who will preside over the body during this first session until a board of directors is chosen.
The result will go to a referendum in December.
The counselors will have 5 months to prepare a new proposal that will be put to the vote on December 17 and will work on a draft written by a group of experts appointed by Congress, which includes a dozen basic principles to avoid a refoundational proposal, such as the Social State. and democratic of law.
The big question lies in whether the extreme right, which defends the neoliberal model installed during the regime and has the power of veto in the Council, will respect these bases or unite with the traditional right to change them at the root.
Boric himself assured on Sunday on the Chilevisión channel that he would “approve” the text as it is.
The two constituent processes, that of 2022 and the current one, arose after the social outbreak of 2019, the largest protests since the end of the dictatorship, with around thirty deaths and thousands of injuries.