An electoral surprise in Chile may produce a left-wing constitution
Anger about inequality drove voters to pick independents for a constitutional convention
IN CHILE THE covid-19 pandemic has had many victims, but for a while the government was not among them. In late 2019 and early 2020 the country was rocked by protests in which 30 people died. It seemed likely that the unrest would topple the centre-right government of President Sebastián Piñera. But he held on by agreeing to draft a new constitution to replace the one introduced in 1980 by Augusto Pinochet, a military dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. Mr Piñera was helped by the pandemic, which took people off the streets and caused the protests to fizzle.
On May 15th and 16th, however, Chileans used the ballot box rather than the street to express their rage. Independent candidates (some, confusingly, affiliated to party lists) grabbed 88 of the 155 seats in the convention to draft a new constitution. With the seats reserved for indigenous people, roughly 68% of participants will be independent, more than the two-thirds majority needed to approve the wording of the new constitution. Mr Piñera’s coalition failed to win the third of seats it expected, depriving it of a veto.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "New faces galore"
From the May 27th 2021 edition
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