SANTIAGO: Chileans voted Sunday on whether to adopt a new constitution that would break from the era of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, foster a more welfare-based society and boost Indigenous rights.

Although Chileans previously voted in droves for a rewrite of the current constitution — adopted in 1980 during Pinochet’s rule — opinion polls suggest the new text could be rejected.

Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (1200 GMT), with long lines of voters gathered in some parts of the country.

Social upheaval that began in 2019 provided the impulse to overhaul the constitution, but the 388-article draft — including proposals to legalize abortion — has proved controversial and often confusing. “I will reject it because it was a constitution that started badly,” Maria Angelica Ebnes, a 66-year-old homemaker, told AFP in Santiago. “It was forced, through violence.” In October 2019, protests sprung up mostly in the capital led by students initially angered by a proposed metro fare hike. Those demonstrations spiraled into wider discontent with the country’s neoliberal economic system as well as growing inequality. Those in favor of the new text are still holding out hope of victory.

“People will go out to vote en masse and the polls will be wrong once again,” said Juan Carlos Latorre, a legislator in the ruling coalition of leftist President Gabriel Boric, who supports the new text.

Boric called for national unity whatever the outcome as he voted in Punta Arenas.

More than 15 million Chileans are eligible to vote in the compulsory referendum.

Among the chief concerns of opponents is the prominence given to the country’s Indigenous peoples, who make up close to 13 percent of the 19 million population.