For the second time in just over a year, Chile is attempting to replace its current Constitution – which was established in 1980 by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). And for the second time, Chileans may well reject the draft text, for reasons opposed to its first iteration. On Tuesday, November 7, 2023, the Constitutional Council – elected on May 7 and composed of 50 members – will submit its proposal for a new fundamental law to left-wing president Gabriel Boric.

This text "is a fundamental tool for getting the country out of stagnation, insecurity, as well as political and social instability," said Beatriz Hevia, president of the Constitutional Council, who hails from the far right Republican party. The party, with the support of the right, was able to impose its liberal and conservative vision of the country on this text, which is the antithesis of the first draft which was put to the popular vote on September 4, 2022, rejected by 62% of voters.

Over the past five months, the Constitutional Council has worked to amend a text that had already been drawn up between March and June of this year by a commission of experts appointed by Congress. This group took up the major principles established in October 2022 by the parties present in Parliament, such as respect for patriotic emblems or fiscal responsibility. This highly supervised process, which has been supported by a "technical committee," will culminate in a binding referendum on December 17.

The Council's final text does take up the concept of the "social state under the rule of law" included in the expert commission's "pre-project," but this has been rendered meaningless, according to the left and center-left – who are in the minority on the Constitutional Council and who feel that various articles contradictory to this principle have been introduced, such as the possibility of choosing between the private or public system in the areas of health, education, and pensions.

In this sense, the text ultimately extends the Constitution inherited from the dictatorship by enshrining the principle of the "subsidiary State" – the State intervenes only secondarily, after the private sector – a concept accused of having frozen social inequalities in place. "This new text is more focused on individual freedoms than on rights, and in this sense, it resembles the 1980 Constitution. The big difference is that it was written in a democracy," observed Sergio Toro, a political scientist at the Universidad Mayor de Santiago.

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