Chilean Politicians Agree To Initiate a New Constituent Process

"We have signed tonight an agreement for Chile, with the political parties with parliamentary strength, which enables the constituent process demanded by the citizenship, a democratic process with a leading role, as it corresponds, to the people of Chile," informed in a press conference the president of the Senate, Alvaro Elizalde.

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After three months in which the political parties were meeting periodically in Congress, on Monday, they finally reached an agreement that consists of the creation of a body called Constitutional Council, which will carry out the functions of drafting the constitutional proposal, as the previous Constitutional Convention did, and a committee of experts appointed by Congress.

The Constitutional Council will be composed of 50 persons elected by popular vote, which must be members of a political party or be endorsed by a party. At the same time, the committee of experts will have 24 names, of which 12 will be appointed by the Chamber of Deputies and the other 12 by the Senate.

Although the elected members will write the substance of the constitutional proposal, the appointed experts will have a broad binding power since they will begin the process by creating a structural text on which the 50 members will have to work; they will have to order and harmonize the text once the drafting is completed and they will also have the power to challenge norms.

The only requirement for choosing the experts is that they have an "indisputable professional, technical and/or academic background."

Both the Constitutional Council and the committee of experts must have gender parity, as was the case in the last Convention. The Council will also have seats reserved for indigenous peoples, the number of which will be determined later.

The preliminary schedule of the process will begin in January of next year with the designation of the experts; in April, there will be elections to choose the 50 members (eventually called "councilors") and in May, the drafting will begin.

In December 2023, a national referendum should be held to ask the citizens whether or not they accept the text proposed by the Constitutional Council. This election will be by obligatory vote.

The last constituent process was frustrated with the September referendum, where the Rejection option won with 61 percent of the votes, against 38 percent for Approval.