Chile’s Constitutional Assembly enters decisive rounds of voting

Chile’s Constituent Assembly has just had its most important week since creation, as the norms drafted by its committees started making their way to the floor for general votes, deciding whether they will be included in the country’s new constitution.

The assembly has been tasked with replacing the dictatorship-era charter originally passed by General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1980. Calls for a new constitution were at the heart of the so-called Estallido Social (Social Outburst) protests that upended Chile between 2019 and 2021. The rallying cry was one of rejection to mainstream politics, not only targeting billionaire businessman President Sebastián Piñera, but also going after the Socialist Party and Christian Democrat coalitions that went along with much of the Pinochet-era economic model while in power.

An astonishing 78 percent of voters voted in favor of drafting a new constitution in a 2020 referendum. Elections for the Constituent Assembly’s 155 members overwhelmingly favored the forces driving the Estallido Social protests: Chile’s political left.

As a result, left and center-left parties took control of the seven committees tasked with drafting the new charter, with a clear mandate to reform the system in a more egalitarian direction, incorporating indigenous and women’s rights, as well as a reform of the police and justice system.

The assembly began work at a snail’s pace last year, with members getting hung up on procedural discussions regarding how new constitutional articles...