Santiago de Chile (EFE).- Former Chilean President Sebastián Piñera assured that the country needs a new “consensus” constitution and said that if the current constitutional process does not come to fruition, “Chile will be in serious trouble.”
“We Chileans have been facing each other for 43 years. In wise countries there is confrontation, but it occurs within the constitutional framework. For a constitution to fulfill its function of unity, stability and projection, a broad and solid agreement of the citizens is essential,” said the president, who governed in the non-consecutive periods 2010-2014 and 2018-2022.
Piñera, who was invited by the body in charge of drafting a second magna carta proposal, defended the constitutional process as a way out of “dialogue and consensus” to the intense demonstrations that broke out in Chile in October 2019, during his second term and that called for profound changes.
“Democracy was at serious risk in 2019,” remarked the former ruler, highly questioned by the repression used by the security forces to stop the protests, which resulted in some thirty deaths and thousands of injuries.
“We want history to recognize the constitutional advisers as those great makers of agreements that give Chile a respected constitution, a great framework that unites the nation and that projects it into the future,” he added.
The former president asked that the new Constitution include the heritage of the Chilean constitutional tradition, but that it also integrate the aspirations of the new generations, such as gender equality and the protection of nature.
The current constitutional process is the second attempt in two years to approve a new Constitution to replace the current text, drafted during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) and reformed dozens of times in democracy.
The first process ended in September 2022 with the rejection of 62% of Chileans to the text, of a markedly progressive nature, to which most of the parties responded by promoting a second process, which is now in its last phase.
The ultra-conservatives, with 22 of 50 elected, are the first force of the Constitutional Council, in charge of closing a new proposal for a Constitution that will be held in plebiscite in December.