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Voters reject new constitution

11 September 2022
 


After the new constitutional proposal was rejected earlier this month, mass protests and riots erupted in the streets of Santiago, the nation’s capital. Protesters gathered around Plaza de Mayo and Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins Avenue and began setting up blockades, severely disrupting traffic. During the unrest, several mobs engaged in vandalism, and the government was forced to suspend all public transport. Additionally, a group of rioters set fire to the El Peral Hospital, though no casualties were reported due to the swift and prompt evacuation of staff, patients and visitors.

Police then used water cannons in order to disperse protesters and President Gabriel Boric made a public announcement asking civilians to return home and remain calm. The rejected new constitution was set to replace one implemented under General Augusto Pinochet’s military rule. However, despite Chileans voting in support of constitutional change in 2020, last Sunday’s referendum failed to advance the proposed constitution, with 62 percent of voters rejecting it.

Following two days of civil unrest, President Gabriel Boric fired his interior minister and then removed one of his chief advisers on 6 September. The cabinet shake-up came after a series of ‘political blunders’ blamed on Giorgio Jackson, the president’s policy coordination liaison with Congress and the Constitutional Convention, who had backed the proposal in a previous referendum. Izkia Siches, the interior minister and Boric’s former campaign manager, was also sacked in a move representing a return to the political centre-left, which Boric had previously criticized and blamed for “not doing enough to fight inequality”.

Giorgio Jackson has now been replaced by Ana Lya Uriarte, a former chief adviser to former President Michelle Bachelet, while Carolina Toha, who served as Secretary-General under Bachelet, will take over the Interior Ministry. The latter was appointed after the proposal to install Nicolas Cataldo, a member of the Communist Party, as the interior minister was profusely rejected by opposition lawmakers. Moreover, Boric had accepted the resignation of the Social Development Minister Jeanette Vega and adviser Hector Llaitul a couple of weeks prior. President Boric’s cabinet reshuffle is clearly a response to the civil unrest brought on by the rejection of the new constitution alongside several criminal accusations looming over his cabinet members.

President Boric has been met with harsh criticism from both sides, over failing to deliver to those who had supported the constitutional process with his coalition and like-minded independents representing a majority of the seats at the failed Convention; and those who believed the new proposal to be “hollow and overly centralizing”. The president was relying on the new charter to help reform the pension, tax and labour systems, but the Chilean people evidently were not keen on the proposed reforms. On the cabinet reshuffle, President Boric said: “This hurts, but it is necessary…it is perhaps one of the most difficult political moments that I have had to face”. President Boric, a key proponent of the rejected constitution, said that despite the “legitimate differences” the desire for dialogue and meetings prevails. “We continue and will move forward with alternative constitutional reform proposals”.