SANTIAGO: Chileans leaned left but turned their backs on traditional political parties in electing a 155-member body over the weekend to rewrite the country’s conservative, dictatorship-era constitution.
A new constitution was a key demand of 2019 protests that left several dozen dead but gave rise to what has been labeled Chile’s most important election since its return to democracy 31 years ago.
Chile’s existing Magna Carta limits the role of the state and bolsters private enterprise. It is blamed by many for the deep-rooted gulf between rich and poor, but hailed by others for the country’s many decades of economic growth.
Fewer than half of the country’s 14.9 million eligible voters turned out on Saturday and Sunday to elect a “constitutional convention” that will be tasked with drawing up a new founding law for a new Chile.
Almost half of voters opted for independent candidates, most of them left-leaning, in a symbolic vote interpreted as a rebuke of the ruling right and of traditional political parties more broadly.
It showed, said Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera, that his government and parties were not “attuned to the demands and aspirations of citizens.”
With 99.9 percent of the vote counted by Monday morning, candidates representing traditional parties were in the minority, with over 46 percent of votes having gone to independents, the biggest single block.
Candidates aligned to leftists parties, which broadly proposed a profound constitutional rehaul to guarantee greater state control of natural resources and more social spending, received a third of the votes cast.
The right, which defends the constitution’s capitalist, free-market guarantees, garnered just over 20 percent.
Many of the independent candidates — an assortment of teachers, writers, journalists, lawyers and activists — were involved in or inspired by the 2019 uprisings and campaigned with promises of social change.
Political scientist Claudio Fuentes said most of them have leftist political affinities, meaning that the right finds itself isolated on the new constitution-writing body.
The Santiago stock exchange opened 9.6 percent lower Monday on the back of the weekend vote, while the peso retreated 2.1 percent against the US dollar.
Chile’s constitution dates from 1980, enacted at the height of dictator Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 rule.
It promotes private enterprise in all sectors of the economy — including education, health and pensions — in a country ranked as one of the most unequal among advanced economies.
This inequality was one of the main drivers of the October 2019 protests that resulted in the government agreeing a month later to a referendum on a new constitution.
On October 25 last year, 80 percent voted for a new constitution to be drawn up by a body of elected members.
The 155-member drafting group, which will have nine months to come up with a proposed new founding law for Chile, is composed of 78 women and 77 men, with 17 seats reserved for representatives of indigenous communities.
The product of their work must be approved or rejected in a mandatory national vote next year.
Chile has the highest per capita income and the third-most multimillionaires in Latin America. But the working and even upper-middle classes are heavily indebted, often to pay for schooling and private pensions. There is low satisfaction with the quality of life.
Voters also chose regional governors, mayors and local councilors in a litmus test for presidential elections due in November.
The vote was held over two days to reduce crowding during a Covid-19 outbreak that has resulted in more than 1.2 million recorded cases and nearly 30,000 reported deaths in the country of 19 million people.