The Right Is Sewing Doubts about Chile’s New Constitution

“If I voted for it and now I’m no longer for it, am I inconsistent?”, asks a young woman in an election commercial about the Chilean referendum scheduled for 4 September. The commercial advocates for a “no” vote in the referendum on the new draft constitution.

The call for a new constitution was born out of the revolt in October 2019, when millions of Chileans protested against the social inequality that plagues the country. A year later, almost 80 percent of the electorate voted to replace the current constitution, which dates back to Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, with a new one. Chileans elected a Constitutional Convention in May 2021, with left-wing parties and non-party representatives from social movements winning the majority of seats.

The Undecided Decide

Since then, the pro-constitution camp has lost a lot of support. The new constitution’s opponents have been ahead in all polls so far. As a result, the camp of the undecideds will be decisive in the vote — which is compulsory.

The opinion polling institute CADEM currently puts the number of doubters at around 16 percent, but the trend is rising. The main reason for this shift is contradictory information about the rights enshrined in the new constitution. Furthermore, a “no” campaign organized well in advance succeeded in exploiting the structural deficits of the Constitutional Convention itself.

In the last 12 months, a two-thirds majority in the Constitutional Convention has passed a number of articles with the potential to fundamentally change Chile. For example, the new draft characterizes Chile as a “welfare state” and strengthens its powers in the health and pension systems, education, and housing creation — all of which are areas where the current constitution primarily safeguards private-sector interests. Reproductive rights, including the right to abortion, are also enshrined.

Another significant change is that water is declared a common good that cannot be privatized. The current constitution, on the other hand, explicitly protects private ownership of water — a model that particularly favours water-intensive industries. In a country suffering from drought and water shortages, such an article marks a real milestone.

Yet much of that has been lost in the current referendum campaign. Instead, debates revolve around the articles on “plurinationality”, which are designed to strengthen spaces for indigenous self-governance and representation, but have proven to be an irritant for many Chileans in the south of the country. There, the “no” campaign deliberately promotes the idea that the new constitution would privilege indigenous communities over the rest of the population.

The campaign also exploits the scope for interpreting norms in other areas to stoke fear. The misinformation that the constitution abolishes home ownership has been repeatedly spread by right-wing Convention members, most recently through leaflets resembling official Convention material. Also much debated is the misinformation that private patients would be forced into the public health system by the new constitution. Claims that this will lengthen wait times in public hospitals is particularly alarming for older people from low-income families, who currently make up a large part of the undecideds.

The governing coalition led by left-progressive president Gabriel Boric supports the new constitution. The government was accused of interfering with the referendum campaign in mid-July after it commissioned the mass printing of the new text, but since then has maintained a low profile.

The majority of Chile’s Christian Democratic Party voted in favour of the new constitution in early July. Under the slogan Apruebo para reformar (“Accept to reform”), centre-left parties of the Socialismo Democrático coalition, which is part of the government, are trying to convince undecided voters. This marks a discursive concession to the political Right, which portrays the draft constitution as flawed.

“Our commitment to the new constitution is not based on political calculation”, Manuela Royo, ex-Convention deputy and spokesperson for the non-party campaign “Accept the New Constitution”, told El Desconcierto. “We stand for positive social change through which citizens are granted more decision-making power.”

The campaign brings together more than 100 grassroots organizations nationwide, including the Movement for the Protection of Water, Earth and the Environment (MODATIMA), which supported Royo in her candidacy for the Constitutional Convention.

The Right Plays the Centre

The parties of the political Right are campaigning under the slogan Rechazo por una Mejor (“Reject for a better [constitution]”). These same parties opposed a new constitution in the first referendum in 2020. Today, they seek to demonstrate that one does not have to be right-wing to reject the project, while doing their best to hide extreme right-wing positions, such as those of the defeated presidential candidate José Antonio Kast. Even former president Sebastián Piñera has not yet commented on the new constitution.

The “no” campaign is supported by some Christian Democrats and parts of the conservative wing of the ex-Concertación (the centre-left coalition that governed for 30 years after the dictatorship) who have profited from Chile’s economic upswing. Their criticisms of the new constitution include the proposed quota for indigenous candidates and the transformation of the Senate into a “Chamber of Regions”, which would mean the loss of some Christian Democrats’ Senate seats. They had already campaigned for the drafting of a new text during the Convention under the slogan Una que nos una (“One that unites us”).

In the meantime, all forecasts are predicting a close result on 4 September. Mapuche lawyer Salvador Millaleo attributes this to the loss of legitimacy that the Constitutional Convention has suffered in recent months. “The mistake was to believe that change had already taken place, when in fact it was only underway”, says the sociologist. “Some Convention delegates thought a political climate shaped by the revolt and the pandemic was a definitive cultural change.”

Convention debates were hyped up in the media. A disproportionate number of MPs spoke out, portraying the process as sectarian. For example, the Environmental Commission, from which the enshrinement of water as a natural commons came, faced repeated criticism from within its own ranks. Economist Bernando Fontaine felt left out of debates and described the article enshrining nature as a legal subject as an “ideological excess”.

Today, Fontaine heads the “no” campaign, which by mid-July had received 98 percent of all registered donations. Among the donors are big businessmen like Patricio Crespo, who currently owns water rights for the irrigation of 13,800 cubic metres per year.

Rumours Dominate the Debate

“If you only look at the debates and not the results, then you can share certain concerns”, says Juan Martin, former head of the Environmental Commission. The environmental activist also attributes the ignorance among the population concerning the articles that have been passed to a failure on the part of the government. “When we asked the national TV station, the answer was: ‘All we can offer you is a banner on the website.’ That is an embarrassment for a republican process like this.”

As a result, many Chileans followed the process through the social media pages of individual MPs. Moreover, there was no unified communication strategy. “We saw the misinformation coming”, says 26-year-old Juan Martin. “But we just didn’t have time to argue with the press.”

Rumours that the norms would endanger the unity of the Chilean state and subject the population to indigenous justice persist to this day. “In the south, there is now an absolutely hostile climate towards indigenous people”, Millaleo reports. “In this, the political Right equates discussion of indigenous rights with the demands of the most radicalized Mapuche organizations.”

The governing coalition has now reacted to the general uncertainty and published an agreement on concrete reform projects. Among other things, it states how it intends to interpret the norms on plurinationality — provided, that is, that the constitution is adopted.

An Alternative Process Would Prove Complicated

Should the new constitution be rejected on 4 September, the legitimacy of the government would take a big hit. Presidential Secretary Giorgio Jackson has already indicated that parts of the government’s programme depend on its adoption.

President Boric’s announcement to initiate a new constitutional process in case of rejection would have to be waved through by a majority in the parliament, which is dominated by the Right. If the draft is rejected, another reform process through parliament would be the most likely scenario. Since its entry into force in 1980, the current constitution has already been reformed 59 times.

In the meantime, under pressure from the opposition, the parliamentary quorum for constitutional amendments has been lowered from a two-thirds to a four-sevenths majority. There would be no guarantees that the reform projects would be oriented towards the issues taken up by the Constitutional Convention. On the contrary, the rejection of a plurinational and welfare-state oriented constitution would provide a democratic argument against profound change — and not only for the Chilean Right.

A narrow victory for the supporters would give a boost to discussions around the need to reform the text. For these reforms, the government would also be dependent on votes from Christian Democracy and some from the moderate Right. They could use a close result to demand far-reaching reforms to the constitutional text itself.

Approval of the draft constitution with a majority of over 55 percent, on the other, would give the government tailwind to push ahead with legislation in core areas during Boric’s term in office, which lasts until 2026.

One thing is already certain: whether the new constitution is rejected or adopted, it will be important for the social movements to keep up the pressure — especially when it comes to the congress’s concretization and interpretation of the constitution’s meaning.

Social movements are also tipping the scales in the current election campaign. “There is a contradiction between what the polls and the mass media report and what we experience on the ground every day”, Manuela Royo told El Desconcierto. “We know we have a lot of informing to do, but in doing so we are building on assumptions that come from years of organizing experience. Now we can point to a future and put an end to that Chile that is marked by so many abuses.”

The pro-government campaign also relies on civil society actors. Both campaigns are now coordinating to reach out to people on the streets and at their doorsteps who have heard little or contradictory things about the new constitution. Their educational work will be decisive in determining whether doubters also decide to vote in favour.