Incidents in the installation of the Constitutive Convention in Chile: they suspended the session

With hopes and also with some fears The Convention which will draft a new Constitution is installed this Sunday in Chile, as an institutional response to the crisis that triggered the wave of protests in October 2019 demanding greater equality of rights and social protection.

The installation ceremony was set for 10 a.m. local time, 2 p.m. GMT, with the swearing-in of members and the election of the chair. However, the sitting was suspended until noon when a group of voters linked to the 2019 social protests broke into the act demanding the release of “political prisoners” and a complaint for that the special forces withdrew from this area of ​​the center of the capital, given the clashes with the demonstrators of the various marches convened. After 12 noon, the session had not resumed.

“We are not going to start the ceremony until they assure us that outside we have stopped repressing our people.», Expressed Elsa Labraña, constituent of the Pueblo list. “More repression” also chanted voters while the anthem rang out at the start of the ceremony, which marked the trigger for the drafting of the new Constitution, in support of the hundreds of people who demonstrated in front of the former National Congress, where there were clashes of demonstrators.

“We want to have a party of democracy and no problem, we will suspend the session for a few minutes”, declared Carmen Gloria Valladares, rapporteur of the Qualifying Tribunal for the elections.

In a report at 11:30 a.m., the riflemen said there were no detainees and that a man in uniform was injured and taken to hospital.

“The constituents want the installation of the Convention to be done as quickly as possible, we have waited for this moment 200 years, but not at any cost. I hold this government responsible if the installation does not take place today, ”Elector Jorge Baradit wrote at midday.

The 155 elected members of the convention, 77 women and 78 men, elected with an unprecedented equality of votes and who reserved 17 seats for indigenous peoples, are tasked with drafting the Constitution which will replace the current one, initially drafted by a small commission during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and approved in 1980 in a process called into question.

During the last 30 years of democracy, it has undergone several reforms, but it has maintained its essence to support an ultra-liberal economic model bringing progress and also inequality, which triggered the massive demonstrations – some very violent – he 20 months ago.

The heterogeneity of the members who will take the oath this Sunday as conventional, mostly independent with left affinities and without experience of the public service, added to the fact that none of the candidate lists managed to reach the third which alone grants the right of veto, paves the way hope it will be a body obliged to make agreements.

But this same diversity of postures and origins nourishes the fear that the discussions will drag on and that ultimately the text does not meet the expectations of citizens.

“The whole country is represented and they will sit down to talk, to talk about the country we want. For the first time, I see that there is an example of as much power as this one in which the powers in place are not late, ”he told the AFP the Jesuit priest Felipe Berríos, one of Chile’s most influential voices. “The Chilean people have a vocation of dialogue, of understanding. You shouldn’t be afraid of it, ”he added.

Pretension

But the frictions born from the solicitations of some of the constituents put a dose of tension in the days preceding the installation.

Representatives of indigenous peoples criticized the government for failing to ensure the conditions to meet some of the demands imposed by their worldview and others complained about the lack of budget for consultants.

The “List of cities», Organized in the heat of street demonstrations and made up of a motley group of housewives, lawyers and activists, who surprised by obtaining 27 representatives, called for demonstrations before the start of the ceremony.

The demonstration was called in Plaza Italia, the epicenter of the demonstrations, to move towards the headquarters of the former Congress in Santiago, where the ceremony will take place, in what another part of the population considers “a undue popular pressure ”.

The day before, 60 voters signed a letter demanding “democratic guarantees for the healthy installation of the convention”, in which they demand, among other things, the release of detainees from the social uprising of 2019.

“The process starts off on the wrong foot, considering that the ideal was to generate consensus and basic agreements to draft a new Constitution.“He told the AFP the academic of the University of Talca, Mauricio Morales. A few hours later, “we don’t discuss content, so we don’t see such a simple panorama. It won’t be such an easy installation, ”he said.

On the other hand, the constituent Cristina Dorador, one of the signatories of the letter, affirms that “there is a lot of will for dialogue”.

After taking the oath, the Positions of president and vice-president. There is a certain consensus that emphasizing the unprecedented joint nature of the convention be a woman who chairs it. In the anteroom, the names of the scientist Cristina Dorador, from the journalist Patricia politzer and the Mapuche scholar and linguist Elisa Lonçon.

The Convention will have nine months – extendable only once for three additional months – to draft the new text, which will then be submitted to a ratification plebiscite with compulsory voting.

According to the political agreement that gave rise to the process, the constituent body “will have as with the sole aim of drawing up the new Fundamental Charter, without affecting the competences and attributions of other State bodies”.

It cannot either “modify the quorums or the modalities of its functioning and the adoption of resolutions, established by a two-thirds majority of its members”.

As a first step, the agreement must write your own rules, an issue which some believe could delay, taking time for the drafting of the new Constitution.

(With information from AFP)

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