ON SUNDAY, September 4, millions of Chileans voted in a plebiscite on whether to approve or reject a new constitution drafted by extreme leftists. With an overwhelming and resounding majority vote, Chileans repudiated the socialist Constitution, signifying a dramatic failure for President Gabriel Boric and Chile’s most extreme forces.
According to the electoral authority’s figures, almost 62% of Chileans voted against the new Constitution; while 38% voted in favor. What was also remarkable was the turnout: a very high 85%. More than 12 million people voted, with almost 8 million rejecting the leftist initiative and only 4 million supporting it.
The new constitutional text sought to reform the Chilean government and squander everything that made the country one of the freest and most prosperous in the world. Unlike Chile’s 1980 Constitution (which protected economic freedom, private property and guaranteed the functioning of a market economy model), the new Constitution repealed these principles and opened the way to greater state intervention, limited the separation of powers (abolishing the Senate) and dismantled the principle of equality before the law.
The latter being one of the most controversial points: the new Constitution gave special rights and privileges to indigenous people, which automatically separated them from the rest of society.
Gabriel Boric accepted its failure but assured that the process of consolidating a new Constitution is not over. However, the horizon does not look good for the leftist president, one of the youngest in the world.
In 2020, 80% of Chileans voted in favor of a new Constitution. In December 2021, 56% of Chileans voted for Gabriel Boric, so far the most leftist president the country has ever had. At that time, Chile’s socialist process seemed unstoppable, threatening to end the market economy of one of the freest countries in the world. However, everything changed.
The honeymoon with Boric lasted less than a semester; today, his approval rating is only 39%. In addition, millions of Chileans repudiated his constitutional proposal, conceived by militant extremists who did not even make an effort to camouflage their ideological dogmatism.
Chile is waking up and correcting its course, which until a few months ago seemed to be heading for a cliff until a few months ago. The most prosperous country in the region, with the most robust and prepared middle class, must demonstrate that freedom is always more valuable and that socialism is simply a mirage. There is still time.
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Orlando Avendaño is the co-editor-in-chief of El American. He is a Venezuelan journalist and has studies in the History of Venezuela. He is the author of the book Days of submission // Orlando Avendaño es el co-editor en Jefe de El American. Es periodista venezolano y cuenta con estudios en Historia de Venezuela. Es autor del libro Días de sumisión.