Those who support the Rejection of the new Constitution claim that with some reforms the current text can satisfy social demands. However, some lawyers, such as constitutionalist Miriam Henríquez (2021), point out that the rulings of the Constitutional Court (TC) disprove this idea, as this body consistently prevents substantive reforms, arguing that they contradict the Constitution. This is because the Constitution is not neutral: it promotes a subsidiary state that, as a matter of principle, considers services that are to be transformed into social rights as services provided by private parties. Therefore, the current Constitution and social demands are not compatible.
By Jorge Molina and Patricio Mery Bell
Pinochet’s great economic and social counter-reform lay in the privatisation of state enterprises and his call for foreign capital to come and invest in our country. At a laughable price, Pinochet’s friends and relatives appropriated the most important electricity, mining and service companies and began to amass their current fortunes, especially since they began to resell them to transnational companies. The famous principle of subsidiarity of the state, which to this day is protected by the 1980 Constitution, was the ideological cornerstone of the radical neoliberalism that still governs us today. This also explains the dreadful concentration of our wealth in just a few hands, making us one of the most unequal countries in the world.
The civil-military dictatorship not only tried to get rid of the most profitable and strategic productive entities, but also to transfer our education, health, public transport and countless urban and rural properties to profit-seeking entities. Even dispossessing the peasants of their land and, most serious and scandalous of all, the workers as a whole of their social security contributions. With the exception, of course, of the Armed Forces and the police.
This makes it imperative to approve a new Constitution; Nevertheless, names such as Marcela Cubillos, Axel Kaiser, Felipe Kast, Harry Jürgensen, Diego Schalper, Iván Moreira, Camila Flores, Javier Macaya, Rojo Edwards, Martín Arrau, Bernardo Fontaine, Ruggero Cozzi, Rocío Cantuarias, Ruth Hurtado, Arturo Zúñiga, Teresa Marinovic, Ricardo Neumann, Eduardo Cretton, Ximena Rincón, Felipe Harboe, among many others, regularly contribute to poisoning the environment by disseminating fake news with the sole purpose, of course, of preserving the prerogatives and privileged roles of themselves, their friends and their business financiers, which for years has made them a true caste.
According to Joaquín Castro Mauro of El Desconcierto, the brutal compilation of fake news propagated by the privileged of always would be the following, so far:
-Effective protection of the right to property in all its forms is finished.
The approved norms do establish the right to property, ensuring that “every person, natural or legal, has the right to property in all its forms and over all kinds of goods, except those that nature has made common to all persons and those that the Constitution or the law declares inappropriate”.
-The hierarchy and the effect of the protection remedy are ended.
In place of the remedy of protection, a similar figure is established, but with a different name: the “action for the protection of fundamental rights”, which provides that in the face of threats and others, “it will be possible to bring an action by oneself or by anyone on one’s own behalf before the court of instance determined by law (…) This action may be brought as long as the violation persists”.
-Eliminates the Carabineros institution.
The articles on public security and police speak broadly of police, a term that covers both the Carabineros and the Investigative Police (PDI).
-There will be no equality before the law
The Constitutional Convention, in the article establishing the right to equality and non-discrimination, explicitly states that “the Constitution ensures equality before the law for all persons”.
-The territorial unity of the state ceases to exist.
At the beginning of the chapter on the Regional State of the draft, it is clearly stated that “Chile, in its geographical, natural, historical and cultural diversity, forms a single and indivisible territory”.
-Isapres are eliminated
The proposal mentions that “the National Health System may be made up of public and private providers”. The role of private providers is left to be defined by law.
-There is no limit to strikes, even those aimed at preserving the integrity of the company or the functioning of essential services.
Although the right to strike is enshrined in the draft of the new Constitution, the same article states that the law “may establish exceptional limitations on strikes to attend to essential services that could affect the life, health or safety of the population”.
-The Central Bank will not have independence
The draft constitution defines the central bank as “an autonomous body with legal personality and its own assets, of a technical nature, responsible for formulating and conducting monetary policy”.
-There will be no neutrality in law by introducing a gender focus.
By stating that “the courts, whatever their competence, must rule with a gender focus”, it does not refer to preferential rulings for women. What is meant is that judgements should not be made with respect to social roles defined for women and men.
-Abortion may take place days or hours before the baby is born.
Article 253 states that the state must ensure “to all women and persons with gestational capacity, the conditions for a pregnancy, a voluntary interruption of pregnancy, voluntary and protected childbirth and maternity”. A law will regulate the exercise of this right.
-The world ends as the focus of the state’s international relations.
The draft states that “Chile declares Latin America and the Caribbean as a priority area in its international relations”. This does not imply that this norm is detrimental to the rest of the country’s international relations.
-The Convention approved norms that take power away from the regions, increase presidentialism, put an end to democratic equality, and generate first (indigenous) and second (Chilean) category citizens.
The proposal includes an entire chapter dedicated to the regional state. It also opts for “attenuated presidentialism”, as specialists have defined it, and establishes that all people are equal in rights, both indigenous and non-indigenous.
-Maduro celebrates and sends greetings to the Convention for the delivery of the draft
There was never such a video on Nicolás Maduro’s Twitter account.
-Rodrigo Rojas Vade participated in the drafting of the New Constitution.
Rojas Vade did not participate in any commission or Plenary vote.
-The patriotic emblems are eliminated: anthem, flag, coat of arms and even the cueca (traditional dance).
The chapter on constitutional principles establishes that the flag, the coat of arms and the anthem will continue to be the national emblems of Chile.
-The Catholic University has not participated in the constitutional discussion.
The UC Public Policy Centre published 14 documents with positions of UC academics on multiple issues. Among them, education.
The Constitutional Convention’s board proposes a work schedule that assumes the one-year extension.
The process of drafting a new Magna Carta was only extended for three months.
-The Convention has a Bolivarian agenda.
Exaggerated and tendentious assertion by a right-wing Convention member.
-The principles of good living, secularism, intersectionality, among others, are not included in the right to education.
The article referring to education establishes that this right will be governed by the principles enshrined in the proposed New Constitution, which does include buen vivir, intersectionality and secularism.
-The new constitution aims for all public goods to be provided exclusively by the state.
In all articles referring to rights, space is left for private participation through laws regulating related sectors.
-Territorial weeks were eliminated
A proposal approved by the Plenary modified the general schedule, rescheduling the territorial weeks of February, March and April to May 2022.
-A foreigner with 5 years’ residence in Chile could be President
According to article 40 of the draft, “to be elected President of the Republic it is required to have Chilean nationality”, among other requirements, so a foreigner could not run for the post, regardless of his or her years of residence.
-The Constitutional Convention has just excluded the Republic of Chile from the new Constitution.
The word Republic appears 118 times in the text.
-The flag of the evangelical church was banned in the Convention. It was not banned, but it was not raised in the former National Congress either.
Chile lost a US$60 billion mega-project because of constitutional uncertainty. There is no evidence of any kind.
-The armed forces would not be able to cooperate as they have done in disaster situations.
According to the constitutional draft, and as is currently the case, when a State of Catastrophe is declared, both the Armed Forces and the police will be under the charge of the civil authority designated by the President of the Republic.
-Plurinational Unilateral Parliament is approved in the Convention.
False, because the proposal contains an asymmetrical parliamentarism composed of the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Regions.
-Deputies can oversee the constituent body.
It is not within the powers of deputies to do so.
-The front page of Las Últimas Noticias where Rojas Vade declared that the New Constitution represents him.
Cover false and edited to look real. Rojas Vade has not given interviews to LUN. Carabineros and PDI are replaced by civilian police led by politicians, where the hierarchical, obedient and non-deliberative order is eliminated. The draft establishes that the police depend on the Ministry in charge of public security and are civilian institutions of a centralised nature, with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Chile, and are intended to guarantee public security, give effectiveness to the law and safeguard fundamental rights, within the framework of their competences.
-Call for early elections at no time was this proposed in any committee.
-We are not going to have one state or one republic or one nation, but we are going to have different nations.
Although it is recognised that within Chile there are several nations, these are framed within a single State and Republic of Chile.
-They want to eliminate the judiciary What today is known as the Judicial Power, in the constitutional proposal is renamed “Justice Systems”.
It will have similar powers; it is not eliminated.
-Since the Constitutional Convention, it has been suggested to eliminate the Senate and merge the Executive and Legislative powers in the National Congress.
The Senate was indeed eliminated in the proposal, but the other two branches of government remain separate.
-The Natural Resources Commission is against the export of fruit.
The issue was never discussed in the Environment Committee.
-The left refuses to condemn violence.
A declaration incorporating the phrase “The Constitutional Convention condemns all forms of violence” was adopted.
-This will not be the first time that the Chilean Constitution recognises indigenous peoples.
None of the previous Constitutions recognises native peoples.
-Some in the Constituent Assembly want to change the name of the country.
There is no register of any initiative to change the name of the country.
-One day of the Convention costs Chile more than 30 million pesos.
The total estimated budget of the Convention was 10,715 million pesos for 12 months. If this was divided per day it effectively gives $30 million. However, this amount is not divided by days, but by items of expenditure, which are established by the Convention’s Administrative Unit. Companies will have to dispense with the use of fee-paid workers. The text establishes that “subcontracting shall only be permitted for activities outside the company’s line of business. All forms of precarious employment, such as fee contracts that conceal stable labour or administrative relations, or the outsourcing and externalisation of services, are prohibited.
-The word ownership is nowhere to be seen.
The word property appears a total of 14 times in the text.
-Two dwellings may not be owned and will be expropriated for distribution to the homeless.
There is no mention of this anywhere in the proposal. Instead, the text provides for the creation of a National Housing System.
-The new text is a copy of the Bolivian Constitution.
It deals with similar matters, but in no way is it plagiarism.
-Article 210 says that the constitutions of neighbourhood councils will be elaborated by the municipal council and the mayor.
This is false. Article 210 of the proposed New Constitution states that “The communes shall establish territories called neighbourhood units. Within the neighbourhood unit, a neighbourhood council will be constituted, representative of the people who reside in it, which will have legal personality and will be non-profit (…) The law will establish the way to determine the territory of the neighbourhood units, the procedure for the constitution of the neighbourhood councils and communal unions and their attributions”.
Finally, with respect to our conservative and reactionary political caste, I address a torpedo made by the intellect of the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, “The right chooses the past because it prefers the dead: still world, still time. The powerful, who legitimise their privileges through inheritance, cultivate nostalgia”.
