The Plenary of the Constitutional Council will hold its first work session next Monday, June 12, at the headquarters of the former national congress, in Santiago.
The plenary session will be chaired by the table made up of the president, Beatriz Hevia (Republicans), and the vice president, Aldo Valle (IND-PS), and one of the main objectives of the day will be to inform the 50 councilors about the process of citizen participation that will take place during the month of June.
For this, the rectors of the University of Chile, Rosa Devés, and of the Catholic University, Ignacio Sánchez, will be present, who will report on the progress in said process.
In addition, during the session the formation of the four work commissions of the Constitutional Council, in charge of drafting the rules of the new Constitution, will be announced.
The Committee on Political System, Constitutional Reform and Form of State will be chaired by Counselor Edmundo Eluchans (UDI), while the Committee on Jurisdictional Function and Autonomous Bodies will be chaired by Counselor Antonio Barchiesi (Republican Party). Counselor María de los Ángeles López (Republican Party) will lead the commission on Principles, Civil and Political Rights, and Germán Becker (RN) will chair the commission on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights.
Among the councilors for Ñuble, there are still no definitions regarding which commissions they will make up, however Carolina Navarrete (UDI) stated when she was elected her intention to join the Jurisdictional Function or Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights commission.
Meanwhile, yesterday the delegates of each of the benches (Republican Party, Luis Silva; Socialist Party, Alejandro Köhler; Independent Democratic Union, Arturo Phillips; Democratic-Independent Revolution, Julio Ñanco; National Renewal-Political Evolution, Pilar Cuevas; and Communist Party-Social Convergence, María Pardo); They continued to address the composition of the commissions, including the number of seats for each party and the names of its members. Each commission must have at least 12 members, except one of them, which will have 14.
During Monday’s plenary session, the names of the members of the four commissions will be submitted for agreement. The negotiations for the integration of these have presented complications, and have evidenced the first clashes between the forces of the ruling party and the opposition. The situation worsens because the Republican Party and Chile Vamos will remain with the presidencies of the four instances, thus excluding Unity for Chile.
Citizen Participation Month
For a month, citizens will have the opportunity to participate and translate their ideas into the proposal for a new Constitution.
To this end, the Secretariat for Citizen Participation (SPC), the University of Chile, the Catholic University of Chile, accredited regional universities and various civil society organizations are carrying out a special plan, which began on June 7, and will run until July 7.
This is focused on collecting the opinion of the people in this Constitutional Process, and for this there are four ways or mechanisms to achieve this objective: Popular Initiative of norm (people or groups can present an initiative to change, eliminate or add any norm to the draft. Once reviewed, the proposal will be published on the website. The deadline for submitting initiatives is from June 7 to 18); Public Hearings (people can request public hearings to present their views to the Constitutional Council. These requests can be made through the website until July 14. All hearings will be attended, either by the counselors of the four commissions or by accredited universities, from Arica to Punta Arenas); Citizen Dialogues (this participation format is divided into two modalities: Convened Dialogues and Self-convened Dialogues); and Citizen Consultations (in this mechanism, people can participate in an individual survey where they can answer one or more topics of interest within a period of 15 minutes. Those interested can even do so through their own mobile phones).
All the information regarding how to participate is available at secretariadeparticipacion.cl, or at yo.quieroparticipar.cl, a site that can be accessed with a unique password.
