Lectures: 182
The facts are clear. The Republican Party with 23 representatives plus the 11 from Chile Vamos will draft the new constitution without restrictions. The democratic, progressive sectors will not have much relevance and influence. “It will be a new conservative constitution for Chile, but perhaps more radically conservative than the 1833 constitution could have had,” says academic Juan Carlos Gómez Leyton.
He adds that “it will be very similar to the 1980 constitution before the reforms that Ricardo Lagos introduced in 2005 and the host of other reforms introduced. This leads us to a terrible paradox and contradiction: that we have to decide whether to stay with the new constitution in December or reject the new constitution, which means staying with the Pinochet-Lagos constitution for a while longer until we find another mechanism that allows us to draft a democratic political constitution.
“The paradox that occurs is going to be that we are going to have to “defend” the 1980-2005 constitution because it would clearly be more “democratic” than that of José Antonio Kast. One more paradox in the history of Chile” says Gómez Leyton.
This conservative condition, which is not the ghost of Portales or Pinochet, “is the result of a societal construction initiated by Pinochet but continued and deepened by the Concertación governments for 20 years plus the right-wing governments and the New Majority in the last decade. This is what allows us to clearly state that we are in the presence of a deeply conservative neoliberal society, not in the old sense of the concept but in the new concept of a conservative subject who wants changes that make the capitalist system work better” adds the political scientist.
Regarding the null and white vote. It is without a doubt the best campaign. But that vote came from the September 4 Approval, not the Rejection, he says.
And in view of the future, “we have to think hard about what needs to be done to project ourselves for the coming months.”
