CHILE: Apparently not one for social change as new “Magna Carta” voted down by 2/1 margin.
- By : James Bryson
- Category : International Relations, Politics, World Events
Chile rejected this Sunday by an overwhelming 62.2% the proposal for a new Constitution and decided to maintain the current text, inherited from the dictatorship, according to 88.08% of the votes counted.
“Today there are no winners or losers. There are Chileans who have to meet again,” said the leader of the “Rejection” campaign, Claudio Salinas.
The option of accepting the new Magna Carta, which enshrined a new range of social rights, was supported by only 37.8% of voters.
As soon as the trend was confirmed at the polls, dozens of people began to celebrate, especially in the wealthy neighborhoods of the capital, where the rejection won by more than 10 points of difference.
A gap similar to the one that occurred in Valparaíso, which together with the metropolitan region of Santiago de Chile and Viña del Mar, account for nearly half of the more than 15 million people called to the polls today.
In a first analysis of the results, the president of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), a conservative force, Javier Macaya, assured the press that “this absolutely surpassed the traditional scenario of the right against the left. That is the reason why which today common sense has triumphed”.
Along the same lines, the senator of the Socialist party in the southern region of Los Lagos, Fidel Espinoza, harshly criticized the conventionalists and summoned them to take responsibility for what he called a “debacle.”
“Let the conventional gentlemen take responsibility for this debacle. They wrote a Constitution out of hatred and their frustrations”, he indicated.
“They wanted to go for everything and left us with nothing, they will go down in history. We told it to Gabriel Boric himself months ago. They ignored us,” he added.
THE DAY AFTER
In full scrutiny, the local press revealed that the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, has summoned the leaders of all political parties to a meeting this Monday at the Palacio de La Moneda to analyze the results.
The news is known in the midst of projections that with just 25% of the vote counted, victory is given to the supporters of the option of rejecting the new Constitution, which would keep the current Constitution in force, written in 1980 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. (1973-1990) and partially reformed in democracy.
After voting this morning in his native Punta Arenas, Boric, one of the promoters of the new Constitution, said that whatever the result, he would summon the parties and civil society to continue with the constituent process.
“I can guarantee that our will and our action, regardless of the result, will be to call for a broad national unity from all sectors, from all social organizations, from civil society, from political parties, we want to hear all the voices to be able to move forward with this process,” he stressed.
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