[Politics] Officialism trapped in a Chinese shoe

[FNX Magokiler]

There is less than a month left for the former congress to cease to be the center of operations of the constituent process and the opportunities to reach a transversal agreement are running out. On the one hand, Republicans and Chile Vamos have stated that, with the current wording of the text, they will promote the “For” option in the plebiscite on December 17. However, from the left that announcement is not easy. They insist that the current wording does not represent them, but they also have no room to call for voting “Against” without knowing the final text. Until the text is ready they will not reach any definition, but while they wait, the right takes advantage of competing alone in the campaign for December.

The Expert Commission sent its observations to the Constitutional Council so that it could vote on them on Monday. The observations that obtain 30 votes will be printed in the draft of the new Constitution, those that obtain 33 negative votes will be rejected and everything that falls short will go to a Mixed Commission, which will consist of six councilors and six experts and where the majority will once again be right.

Hopes in the ruling party for their observations to be approved are low and, with the deadline just around the corner - November 7 - the left-wing councilors are in a complex moment, since they are halfway with their determinations: They cannot abandon a process in which they see little representation and they cannot call to vote “Against” before knowing the final text. This, when the campaign for “In favor” is already installed and led by José Antonio Kast.

“What resulted after the experts' vote preserves the heart of the project approved by the Plenary intact. And therefore, our position regarding the remaining text is practically the same as what we had when the votes in the Plenary closed,” said the advisor and head of the Republican bench, Luis Silva. That phrase resonated among pro-government councilors as a bad omen.

 

 

There was hope from the ruling party and from different political parties - even the opposition - that based on the observations of the Expert Commission, a “broad agreement” would be generated between both political sectors that would “moderate” the text emanating from the Constitutional Council, but despite efforts this never happened. Although there is a list of observations that could be more linked to progressive ideas, the fact that Silva confirmed that the heart of the proposal has not been touched means, for the ruling party, that ultimately the needle did not move and the text did not move. changed substantially.

Among the observations promoted by the ruling party are, for example, suppressing individual and institutional conscientious objection, changing the “right to access to water” for “right to water,” eliminating the “serious terrorist threat” as a cause in state. of siege, remove the mention of military justice and reinstate the transitional norm of “gender balance” (parity) that ensures 40% of the seats for both sexes in the next two parliamentary elections.

It must be taken into account that these observations, for them to materialize, must be approved with 30 votes. Number that the ruling party does not have and the Republican Party has the right to veto. Without the approval of the advisors of José Antonio Kast's party, none of these regulations will reach the constitutional text. Furthermore, the hopes that these observations will be approved are low and have little impact on the central axis of the constituent proposal: health, education, pensions, reproductive rights, among others, did not even receive substantive observations from the Expert Commission due to lack of agreement and There is no longer an option to modify it.

 

https://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2023/10/14/oficialismo-atrapado-en-un-zapato-chino/