Chile's Constitutional Process 2.0

CHILE - In Brief 12 Dec 2022 by Robert Funk

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After three months of negotiation, the parties in Congress have agreed on the basic outline of a new process to draft – once again – a constitutional proposal. The details still need to be hammered out, especially among senators, but the general agreement consists of a Committee of Experts who will be named by Congress and will come up with an initial draft. There will be 24 experts in total, 12 elected by the House of Deputies and 12 by the Senate. This committee is expected to be named rather quickly and begin working early in the new year. A constituent assembly of 50 members will be elected, on a regional basis, who will then get to work on the draft proposed by the experts. Finally, before being put to the people, a Harmonization Committee will be set up, made up of both experts and elected members, in order to resolve outstanding issues. This draft will then be voted on in a national referendum. There seems to be no mention of reserved seats for indigenous members. We do not yet know what the threshold will be for both committees, or the dates, although one would expect that the elected committee would have something like six months to do its work, likely from May to October. The final draft should be ready by the end of 2023, with a referendum shortly thereafter. The $64,000 question is whether the new draft will be much different from the one that was rejected back in September. Given the reduced size, the use of experts, the (possible) use of closed lists (reducing the probability of electing independent members), and the absence of reserved seats for indigenous groups, at the moment this seems likely. But these are the details that will need to be clarified i...