Constitutional change is coming to Chile
Lesson summary
Hi there, I’m Jeff and this is Lesson 371 of Plain English. If this is your first time listening, then welcome! We talk about current events and trending topics each Monday and Thursday, at a bit of a slower speed for English learners. JR is behind the controls; he’s the producer. And the full lesson, including a full transcript, is available at PlainEnglish.com/371.
Coming up today: You might remember the social unrest that gripped Chile in late 2019: it was one of the last big global stories before the coronavirus hit. At the time, Chile’s politicians agreed on a potential path to a new constitution. And last month, voters approved a slate of 155 representatives to draft a new national constitution over the next nine months. The English expression we’ll talk about is “hold out hope,” and JR has a song of the week. Let’s dive in!
Assembly to re-write Chile’s constitution
Constitution-writing used to be a popular pastime in Latin America: Both Bolivia and Ecuador created new constitutions every five or ten years for a century and a half; Venezuela has had twenty-six constitutions in its history; Peru has had twelve; Colombia, ten; Brazil, seven. But constitution-writing has fallen out of favor lately. Stable democracies don’t constantly need new constitutions; neither do strongman leaders, who bend and break rules with impunity. Just three new constitutions have been adopted in South America in the last twenty-five years.
But the richest country in the region is about to get a new constitution. Chile’s current constitution was approved in 1980, right in the middle of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Though it has been amended several times since then, many in Chile don’t consider their country’s foundational document legitimate. The drafters of the constitution were hand-picked by Pinochet and his allies, and the vote was far from free and fair.
Despite that, though, the constitution has functioned. In recent decades, right- and left-wing parties have alternated in power. Elections have been free and fair. Political transitions have been peaceful. A former president now serves at the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Chile grew to be the richest country in South America and is one of just three Latin American countries in the OECD.
But resentment of the Pinochet-era constitution has long lurked beneath the surface. That resentment boiled over in October 2019, when Chile experienced the worst social unrest since its transition to democracy thirty years ago.
The immediate cause was a proposed rise in the subway fares. Peak hour fares on the Santiago Metro went up by 30 pesos, or about 4%. In response, residents of Santiago, the capital, organized a fare-evasion campaign: to signal their displeasure with the increase, people jumped the subway turnstiles.
Things soon escalated, as protesters vandalized and set fire to metro stations. Eighty-one metro stations were severely damaged in the protests. Over one million people protested in the streets of Santiago in late October 2019. The city suffered billions of dollars of damage. Suddenly, one of Latin America’s most stable countries was seized with protests and rioting.
President Sebastián Piñera eventually reversed course on the subway fare increase. But as is so often the case, the anger about the subway fares was really about something much deeper. Chile is Latin America’s richest country, but it’s very unequal. Many protesters were fed up with rising inequality in their country, as a small sliver of the population controlled more and more of Chile’s wealth. At the same time , ordinary people struggled with the cost of living. Market-oriented reforms to public pensions, education, and health care were unpopular. And it all stemmed from a constitution written during the dictatorship.
As a way of out the crisis, the right-wing president Piñera negotiated with left-wing parties to chart a three-year course to a new constitution. Each side got what it wanted: the left-wing parties were enticed by the promise of re-writing the constitution to include greater societal protections, and the President gained a reprieve from the immediate crisis.
The path to a new constitution has three steps. The first step was to ask the population if it wanted a new constitution. If the population approved, a slate of writers would be elected to draft a new document. Any proposals would need a two-thirds majority of this constitutional assembly to be incorporated into the final draft. Finally, the Chilean population would vote again to adopt the new constitution.
As expected, Chileans voted in favor of creating a new constitution in October 2020. President Piñera and the market-oriented political establishment knew that public mood was against them; that was clear not only from the protests but also from the lopsided margin in the first referendum. Seventy-nine percent of voters were in favor of a new constitution.
The president and his allies held out hope that their supporters would make up at least a third of the constitutional assembly, and therefore have the power to block the more extreme proposals of their left-wing colleagues. As recently as a week before the election of the assembly members, that seemed likely.
But it was not to be. In elections on May 15 and 16, Chileans selected a 155-member constitutional assembly dominated by left-leaning independent candidates and socialists. The right-wing candidates backed by the business establishment earned less than a quarter of the seats—not enough, on its own, to block any proposals. The Chilean stock market dropped by ten percent in the first day of trading after the assembly was selected. International investors are skeptical.
The assembly now has nine months to produce a draft constitution, which will be put to a yes-or-no vote of the Chilean people. Progressives are optimistic. This is their opportunity to write in social protections for housing, education, health, and the rights of indigenous people. They want to give control of water, pensions, education, and health care to the public sector.
But it will be a challenge. Though the independent candidates are all generally left-leaning, that doesn’t mean they all have the same agenda. Observers predict it will be difficult to find consensus in such a large body of representatives.
What’s more , many of the representatives don’t have political experience. One of the representatives, Giovanna Grandon, made a name for herself during the October 2019 protests; she dressed up in a Pikachu costume and was affectionately called “Aunt Pikachu.”
Constitutional trivia
Here’s a little constitution trivia for you. The oldest constitutions in the world are those of the United States (from 1788), Norway (from 1814), and the Netherlands (from 1815). The newest are from Cuba, Thailand, and the Ivory Coast. The longest constitution—this doesn’t surprise me—the longest constitution is 146,385 words. That belongs to India. The next-longest constitution after that is less than half as long: Nigeria’s is 66,000 words. Brazil and Malaysia are also very wordy constitutions.
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” said William Shakespeare. He might have liked living in Monaco. Its sixty-year old constitution is just 3,800 words. Iceland’s is also brief, at just over 4,000 words. The country with the most constitutions in its history? The Dominican Republic has had 30 since its independence in 1844.
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