Faced with outbreak of pandemic, Chile postpones constituent and municipal elections

With 40 votes for and 2 abstentions, the Senate of Chile approved on Sunday evening the project presented by the Chilean government which postpones the municipal, regional and conventional constituent elections to May 15 and 16, which they were originally set for next weekend.

The main argument for approving this initiative is the strong COVID-19 epidemic which affects the South American country and which maintains it with contagion rates even higher than those recorded in the months of July and August 2020.

This Monday, progress was made in the upper house of the vote in particular which will discuss point by point the details of the proposal, or those for which a separate vote was required, the most controversial due to disagreements between the positions advanced by the executive and those of some representatives of the Chilean opposition.

However, The idea is to send the Senate initiative as quickly as possible so that it can be reviewed this Monday by the Chamber of Deputies as part of the so-called third constitutional process, the one who will have to define if the project is ready to be promulgated by President Sebastián Piñera or if it will be re-examined by a mixed commission made up of deputies and senators.

From the government headed by President Piñera, they stressed the need to send the reform of Parliament as soon as possible, to give certainty to both citizens and candidates who will stand for election. In this case, the chairman of the board of directors of SERVEL, the Minister of the Interior Rodrigo Delgado and the Minister of Health Enrique Paris, who explained the reasons for the date change.

Minister Paris highlighted the work carried out in the Senate and underlined that “The measures adopted last time and the reduction in mobility aim to allow the elections to be held on the scheduled date”. While Minister Delgado said the project “aims to provide certainty from the point of view of the legitimacy of the process and that is why we care so much about what is happening with the discussion”.

One of the points that prolonged the discussion the most is the situation of mayors running for re-election. They are currently in a “campaign period”, for which they must remain outside the exercise of their functions. The most controversial question is whether they should resume their duties immediately after the set preliminary date, i.e. the same April 12. However, If the campaign continues, should they resume their duties or remain with their suspended activity? The answer is uncertain and the point at which the discussion will likely take the longest during this day.

During the debate, the senators who are members of the Constitutional Commission and the representatives of the parliamentary committees agreed that it was necessary to visualize the possibility that the candidate mayors can resume their functions from the date of publication of the reform until April 28. Shortly before the new date. Another factor that will influence the decision is campaign related issues.

In this sense, the senator Francisco Huenchumilla (DC) declared: “I have my qualms about the suspension of the campaign and the continuity of their contributions, and that it does not seem fair that the candidate mayors can resume their functions, ”he said.

From the ruling party, the senator Luz Ebensperger of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) said that “The ban on continuing the campaign is contradictory to him and that he accepts that the contributions are maintained to pay the fixed expenses of the candidates and also that the mayors resume their functions ”, he declared with reference to the financing of political campaigns which is the responsibility of the State of Chile.

On another front One of the organizations that hopes that this decision will be resolved as soon as possible is the Electoral Service of Chile SERVEL, entity in charge of organizing and coordinating the so-called Chilean mega-elections. “For the moment, we are in the worst of uncertainties. Everything suggests that there is a broad will to change the date. But there are some points that delay the process, in the long term minor: the continuation of the campaigns and the question of the mayors. Unfortunately, this takes a long time and runs the risk that the foreign exchange legislation will not be approved ”, said Servel’s chairman of the board, Andrés Tagle.

A possibility that the experts warn as remote, however the determination will be made in the last discussions which will take place on Monday at the National Congress of Chile.

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