Analysis: Chile's constitution will struggle to escape Pinochet's shadow
By Alexander Villegas and Natalia A. Ramos Miranda
[1/5] A citizen casts his vote at a polling station during elections for a new assembly to draft constitution, at the Estadio Nacional, in Santiago, Chile April 7, 2023. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado
SANTIAGO, May 8 (Reuters) - Chile's new constitution may end up looking a lot like the current text, which dates back to the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship - but without his name on it - after the political right took charge of the redraft process in a harsh nationwide electoral defeat for leftist President Gabriel Boric.
Chile's Republican Party, led by far-right firebrand Jose Antonio Kast, secured over a third of the national vote on Sunday to elect advisers to draw up the new constitution, a sharp shift from a progressive majority that led the failed first attempt.
The win for the right will likely set the foundations for a far more conservative rewrite of the neoliberal original text, which was credited for propelling decades of strong growth in the copper mining nation, but criticized for causing wide economic inequalities that sparked months of social justice protests in 2019.
"This is the right's best chance for people to pick a Pinochet constitution without Pinochet's signature," said Patricio Navia a political scientist at New York University.
More:
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chiles-constitution-will-struggle-escape-pinochets-shadow-2023-05-08/
(The voter is carrying a cherub from the Sistine Chapel!)
