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Soriek  6mo ago (text post)   970 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 24

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Chile

In the second round of constitution drafting, Chile’s right wing Republican party (who were initially against changing the dictator-era constitution at all) have now released their version of a new constitution, which will be voted on in a referendum come December 17th. Like Boric’s resoundingly defeated left wing constitution before it, the Republican proposal will include a grabbag of conservative gimmes many of which probably have no place in a constitution at all, including provisions to restrict abortion, “remove a tax on houses (which effectively pay only a fraction of high-income owners, and it’s considered vital to fund services in low-income municipalities), cut the number of seats in Congress, speed up the expulsion of irregular immigrants and grant preferred treatment to victims of terrorism.”

Currently 51% of voters are against the change and 34% in favor. That said, the polls have been trending of support for the changes increasing, even if they’re still long way off and the most likely outcome is failure.

While the country was reasonably united in wanting to cast away the last vestiges of the dictatorship (the recent rise of Pinochet-boos like Kast not withstanding), there doesn’t seem to be much else they can actually agree on.

The government of President Gabriel Boric has said it does not plan a third attempt, and 58% of polled voters said they are also against another rewrite attempt.

The pledge to revamp the South American country's constitution was the main political agreement reached following raucous and sometimes violent protests that played out in 2019.

While around 80% of Chileans voted to draft a new constitution in 2020, voters have grown wary following growing political polarization, economic stagnation and crime.

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