It’s back to the drawing board, as Chile rejects a proposed constitution
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff, JR is the producer, and you are upgrading your English with us, Plain English. Today is September 19, 2022 and this is lesson 504. That means JR has uploaded the full lesson content to PlainEnglish.com/504.
The full content includes interactive exercises, which help train your ear to understand spoken English; they help you pick the right verb tense, the right preposition, the right word every time. All that and more at PlainEnglish.com/504.
Coming up on today’s lesson: It would have been one of the world’s longest constitutions and one of the world’s most progressive. But Chile’s voters rejected the proposal by a 24-point margin. In doing so, they avoided disaster, at least in my opinion. In the second half of today’s lesson, we’ll talk about the phrasal verb “boil over” and we have a quote of the week. Let’s get going.
Chileans overwhelmingly reject proposed constitution
For about the last twenty years, Chile has been one of the most stable big countries in Latin America. It managed to avoid the tumult that beset a lot of other countries in the region. It never had the runaway inflation of Argentina, the corruption of Brazil, the violence of Mexico, the isolation of Bolivia, or the decline into socialist authoritarianism, as in Venezuela and Nicaragua. The government alternated between center-left and center-right politics. Its economy grew steadily and living standards rose.
But the rise in overall living standards masked an uncomfortable daily reality: Chile became a highly unequal society. The rich got richer and the poor couldn’t keep up; it was harder to fit into the middle class. And this inequality all boiled over in 2019, when protesters took to the streets to demand change. The center-right president at the time was backed into a corner, politically. He agreed to a constitutional convention and a three-step process to adopt a new constitution .
Step one was to ask Chilean voters if they wanted a new constitution. The answer was yes—with an asterisk. The vote was taken in the middle of the pandemic, and only 43 percent of the population voted. Then, a slate of representatives was chosen to draft the constitution. They were overwhelmingly left-wing representatives. Finally, the result of the convention would be put up to a vote.
That vote was on September 4—and 62 percent of voters rejected it. Polls before the vote suggested the proposed constitution would be defeated, but the margin of defeat was 24 points; that was a surprise.
Chileans—whether they were for or against the progressive reforms—should breathe a sigh of relief. The proposed constitution was a disaster. To start with, it would have been one of the world’s longest constitutions, at 170 articles. It included a total of 100 rights, some of which were not even defined. Had it been adopted, it would have led to years of confusion and controversy, as people tried to figure out what the document even meant.
Some articles attempted to micromanage the country: one required “nutritionally complete” food, whatever that means; another established a right to “the enjoyment of free time.” The government would have been required, under the constitution, to guarantee “the harmonious inter-relationship and respect of all symbolic, cultural and heritage expressions.” Trust me: that is no clearer in Spanish than it is in English.
But the worst part is, the constitution was a response to the passions of the moment. The problem with that is, political preferences change over time. Constitutions should be short and should be built to last decades. They should allow for changes in political preferences over the years.
As it turned out , this constitution couldn’t accommodate changes over just one year, never mind decades. When the convention was elected, voters were most concerned about inequality. So the drafters, thinking short-term, delivered a wish list focused on inequality. But today , voters are most concerned about inflation and crime. And the constitution would have required a massive increase in state spending—the opposite of what voters want when inflation is running wild.
The final vote was decisive: 62 percent against, only 38 percent in favor . The result was also geographically consistent: not a single one of Chile’s 16 regions voted in favor of the constitution.
The country’s new left-wing president, Gabiel Boric, was a student protester and championed the new constitution. Now, he’s distancing himself from the defeat. But he and Chile now can turn to either starting over with a new draft or proposing additional amendments to the existing constitution.
Back to the drawing board
This was a waste of three years. I followed this a little bit since 2019 and it just seemed like a primal scream of frustration, not a serious reflection on how a country should be governed over the long run. It was good that some of the convention representatives were not political pros, but a lot of them were just unserious. One person voted from the shower; another came to meetings dressed up as Pikachu. They did not rise to the moment.
And it really seemed like one segment took pleasure in steamrolling another segment of society, instead of trying to forge a consensus.
What they weren’t counting on is this—the vote to select the representatives was optional, but the vote to approve the document was mandatory. So the representatives wrote the constitution for the 43 percent who selected them, not the 100 percent who would vote in the end. It was a bad miscalculation. And now Chile has to start over.
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