{"id":22172,"date":"2022-09-13T13:39:04","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T13:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=22172"},"modified":"2023-02-27T22:25:03","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T22:25:03","slug":"chileans-reject-proposed-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2022\/09\/13\/chileans-reject-proposed-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"Chileans reject proposed constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article, written by Otto Fors, on the political setback in Chile, was first posted by Left Voice (USA)<\/a> \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

CHILEANS REJECT PROPOSED CONSTITUTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Chile’s Leftist president Gabriel Boric<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On September 5th , Chileans voted on whether to adopt a new constitution to replace the dictatorship-era document. With nearly all ballots counted,\u00a062 percent<\/a>\u00a0voted in favor of rejection, a resounding defeat. Majorities in most of Chile\u2019s municipalities voted against the proposal, as well as in several districts in the capital of Santiago, which had helped President Gabriel Boric beat far-right politician Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast in last year\u2019s\u00a0presidential elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How was this possible, less than three years after mass mobilizations declared that Chile would be the grave of neoliberalism?<\/p>\n

From October 2019 to July 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n

The origins of the process for a new constitution lie in the\u00a0mass mobilizations<\/a>\u00a0of October 2019, which shook the Chilean political system. A subway fare hike in Santiago set off protests, which were brutally repressed by the right-wing regime of Sebasti\u00e1n Pi\u00f1era, and exploded across the country. The protests began with thousands of students defying rising subway costs by flooding subway stations, but soon more sectors entered the struggle. The uprising grew into a broad, multisector repudiation of gross inequality and the legacy of the 1973\u201390 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The protesters also demanded the ouster of the president and that the dictatorship-era constitution be rewritten. Seeking to take the movement out of the streets and divert it toward the institutions\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and keep Pi\u00f1era in power until the end of his term\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the ruling classes and main political parties crafted a political agreement behind closed doors to create a new constitution.<\/p>\n

In October 2020, a year after the rebellion,\u00a0Chileans voted overwhelmingly to draft a new constitution<\/a>, and a 154-member Constitutional Convention was elected in April 2021. In December, Gabriel Boric was elected president with the support of a broad coalition, ranging from the center Right to the Communist Party. He also had the support of the Chilean masses, who were hoping for a decisive break with the legacy of the dictatorship, which came to power in 1973 as part of a\u00a0U.S.-backed coup<\/a>\u00a0that ushered in decades of terror and turned the country into a laboratory of neoliberalism under the tutelage of U.S. economists like Milton Friedman. The resulting constitution enshrined a free market economic model as the law of the land and that, despite revisions over the years, excludes rights to healthcare, pensions, and education.<\/p>\n

Boric was presented with the draft of the new, 170-page, 388-article document in May. The new draft constitution\u00a0included<\/a>\u00a0Indigenous, LGBTQ+, and labor rights; guarantees to universal healthcare; and requirements for gender parity in government. It would also have legalized abortion. The document also included many other rights and commitments like fighting climate change, protecting the environment, and defining Chile as a plurinational state.<\/p>\n

Yet many demands that were raised in October 2019\u00a0were not reflected<\/a>\u00a0in the new constitution, such as freedom for political prisoners and those imprisoned during the uprisings, the end of private healthcare and private education, and the abolition of the private pension fund system.<\/p>\n

Moreover, although the new constitution did recognize important rights as a result of taking the struggle to the streets, it ultimately did not address the structural problems of neoliberal Chile, which are a barrier to these rights and which force working-class Chileans to pay for the economic and social crises. For example, a constitutionally enshrined right to housing is of little use while the housing shortage continues unabated. Likewise, a constitution that recognizes Indigenous and environmental rights is of little use while the Boric government continues to repress Indigenous people and while big agribusiness companies continue to destroy the environment, plunder natural resources, and steal land with impunity.<\/p>\n

In sum, the new constitution would have left in place many of the important pillars inherited from the dictatorship and failed to provide ways to finance and ensure the fundamental rights it proposed. In fact, the Constitutional Convention itself was far from truly democratic: it could make decisions only with a two-thirds majority, effectively giving right-wing parties veto power and ultimately preserving many of the structures and institutions from the old constitution. While the convention worked on a text and made effectively cosmetic constitutional changes, the old government, police, and bureaucracy stayed in power.<\/p>\n

Reformism, Moderation, and Dashed Hopes<\/strong><\/p>\n

While the margin of defeat in Sunday\u2019s vote was surprising, the result did not fall from the sky\u00a0\u2014\u00a0it was an expression of the rightward shift of the political situation in Chile opened up by Boric\u2019s reformism and illusions in the new government colliding with reality.<\/p>\n

In the lead-up to the constitutional referendum, the Chilean Right waged a vicious\u00a0misinformation campaign<\/a>, falsely claiming, for example, that the new constitution would abolish all private and personal property, including the right to home ownership, and allow abortions up until nine months of pregnancy. Chile\u2019s main business associations joined these calls for rejection, some disingenuously advocating for \u201crejecting [the constitution] in order to reform it\u201d under the slogan \u201cRechazo con amor\u201d (I reject with love).<\/p>\n

These efforts by the Chilean Right were bolstered by capitalists internationally, including financial agencies and several bourgeois media outlets which likewise lobbied for rejection.\u00a0The\u00a0Economist<\/em><\/a>\u00a0referred to the document as \u201ca fiscally irresponsible left-wing wish list,\u201d and\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0Sunday\u2019s rejection a \u201ctriumph\u201d of \u201ccommon sense.\u201d\u00a0TheWashington Post<\/em><\/a>\u00a0similarly called for the constitution to be sent \u201cback for a rewrite\u201d\u00a0\u2014\u00a0tellingly, \u201clithium\u201d was the first word in the article. One\u00a0financial publication<\/a>\u00a0let the mask slip even further: \u201cChile\u2019s copper, lithium industries seen winning from constitutional rejection.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Sunday\u2019s loss cannot be laid squarely at the feet of the Chilean Right, capitalists internationally, or bourgeois publications. Rather, the vote expressed a broad rejection of the economic and social crises represented by the new government, as well as working-class disillusionment with Boric\u2019s class conciliation and concessions to the Right. In the three years since millions mobilized and brought the government to its knees, little has changed for working-class Chileans despite Boric\u2019s election, and Chile has been plagued by compounding crises fueled by rising inflation.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Boric\u2019s election\u00a0represents<\/a>\u00a0the attempt to channel the rebellion and social unrest into the institutions of the bourgeois state. Far from representing a break with the previous regimes, the reformist Boric government has often tread the same path and explicitly promised \u201cmoderation<\/a>\u201d from the start. His\u00a0cabinet<\/a>\u00a0contains several business-friendly centrists and technocrats such as Mario Marcel, former head of the Central Bank of Chile, much to the relief of Chilean and global markets. He has also\u00a0vowed<\/a>\u00a0to tackle Chile\u2019s fiscal deficit and\u00a0repeatedly ceded<\/a>to the demands of big corporations, including implementing austerity measures and minuscule minimum-wage raises, which have been eaten by inflation. And since the start of his term, his government has\u00a0continually repressed<\/a>\u00a0Indigenous mobilizations in southern Chile and defended the police.<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, combined with a low level of class struggle and rising economic crisis, the Right\u2019s heavy campaign against the new constitution resonated among broad sectors of the population. It is worth noting that the Chilean Right was nearly completely knocked out after large parts of the population repudiated it, and President Pi\u00f1era was on the verge of being ousted. But the Boric government breathed new life into these right-wing sectors by ceding to them on nearly every part of the political agenda and by diverting the class struggle into the institutional terrain. Millions of workers, young people, and women became disillusioned, took up the Right\u2019s talking points, and ultimately voted to reject the new constitution.<\/p>\n

Chile Needs a Decisive Break with Capitalist Institutions<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Sunday\u2019s defeat, Boric summoned party leaders to a new meeting and\u00a0emphasized<\/a>\u00a0the need to \u201cwork with more determination, more dialogue, [and] more respect\u201d to continue the process to draft a new constitution that \u201cunites us as a country.\u201d The Chilean working class must fight both against the right-wing offensive, which has been emboldened and seeks to bury the demands of the 2019 uprising, and against the government\u2019s new, anti-democratic constituent process, which will include further backroom deals, concessions to the Right, and institutional maneuvers to thwart popular will.<\/p>\n

Here, it is worth\u00a0recalling the lessons<\/a>\u00a0of Podemos in the Spanish State and Syriza in Greece. Like Boric and the his Apruebo Dignidad (Approve Dignity) coalition, Podemos and Syriza came to power on the promise of ending neoliberalism, but they ultimately bent to the demands of the institutions of the ruling class and ended up implementing many of the same austerity policies.<\/p>\n

The 2019 rebellion in Chile was likewise diverted by illusions in the Constitutional Convention, in reformism, and in the notion that the country\u2019s structural problems, inherited from the dictatorship, could be solved through a controlled constitutional process without touching the pillars of Chilean capitalism. Many on the reformist international Left, too, fostered these illusions, uncritically\u00a0cheerleading<\/a>\u00a0the new constitution and wrongly\u00a0framing<\/a>Boric\u2019s presidency as one of socialism triumphing over barbarism.<\/p>\n

Unions and social movements in Chile must end their truce with the government, in whom they have placed false hopes. Fulfilling the demands of the October 2019 rebellion\u00a0\u2014\u00a0including freedom for political prisoners, full rights for Indigenous peoples, the end of privatized pensions, and free, quality healthcare and education\u00a0\u2014\u00a0will require a decisive break with capitalist institutions in Chile.<\/p>\n

This will require a truly democratic constituent assembly rather than the backroom deals brokered by the regime. But above all, workers\u2019 organizations and social movements need to return to the streets. The working class and oppressed must unite in their struggles and mobilize outside the bourgeois institutions, building an independent party that truly challenges the interests of big business and international imperialism. Only this path forward can bring about a real break with the legacy of the dictatorship and the old constitution, and win the demands of the 2019 uprising. In this task, the Chilean working class and oppressed need the full support of the international Left.<\/p>\n

6.9.22<\/strong><\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

also see:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ecuador\u2019s indigenous people are fighting neo-liberal austerity on the streets \u2013 Margarita Valencia, Left Voice (USA)<\/a><\/p>\n

Historic defeat of the Right in Colombia \u2013 Milton d\u2019Leon, Left Voice (USA)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following article, written by Otto Fors, on the political setback in Chile, was first posted by Left Voice (USA) \u00a0 CHILEANS REJECT PROPOSED CONSTITUTION On September 5th , Chileans voted on whether to adopt a new constitution to replace the dictatorship-era document. With nearly all ballots counted,\u00a062 percent\u00a0voted in favor of rejection, a resounding…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1843,1855,1858,1861,1867,1854,1868,1869,1860],"tags":[9011],"class_list":["post-22172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-capitalists-organise","category-exploitation-and-emancipation","category-oppression-liberation","category-alienation-self-determination","category-emancipation-liberation-and-self-determination","category-the-left-crisis","category-against-imperialism","category-latin-america-and-caribbean","category-other-social-struggles","tag-author-otto-fors"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mastodon.scot\/@rcfscotland\/109939045553564867","error":""},"views":7204,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22172"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23131,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22172\/revisions\/23131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}