Fynsa
This week, I had the privilege of hosting the webinar "Let's Talk About Chile | New Constitution: The Future of the Country from a Political and Economic Perspective,", organized by our company and featuring Horizontal director Juan José Obach. Our goal was to take a broad view and discuss what we believe to be the main political and economic aspects included in the draft and their potential consequences. In this column, I will not summarize the conversation, but rather highlight a way of evaluating the text that I found very interesting.
Our guest raised the following questions: (i) Is this a Constitution that unites us as a country?, (ii) Is this a Constitution that improves the quality of our democracy?, and (iii) Is this a Constitution that will allow the State to advance social rights? This does not mean that these are the only relevant questions, nor that the evaluation of the Constitution should only consider political and economic aspects, but for our purposes, we believe it is a good starting point.
The first question concerns the genesis of this entire process. The social uprising, which began on October 18, 2019, has causes that do not start with that $30 increase in the subway fare, but rather to other much deeper causes that had been dragging on for a long time and that the country's elites were unable or unwilling to address. Given this fragmentation, it was considered that a new constitution, which included all the visions of the country, was a necessary condition for building a new social contract, as defined by Rousseau.
The second has to do with representation. Since the return of democracy, the country has carried out several reforms, with varying degrees of success, in an attempt to improve the distribution of power so that, according to their preferences, every citizen would feel more or less heard when decisions are made. Regardless of our own assessment of our electoral system and elected representatives, there was dissatisfaction among a significant part of the population, the system continued to overrepresent certain groups (and underrepresent others), and there was a conviction that this could be improved. This issue also needs to be addressed in the constitution.
And the third questionis a consequence of the citizens' "list of demands" during the protests that accompanied the social unrest, which called for better education, better healthcare, better pensions, etc. Despite the numerous educational reforms that have been implemented since the 1990s, we have not been able to improve in the various international rankings to which we submit ourselves, occupying, for example, one of the lowest places within the group of OECD countries. What's more, this is not only the case for state education, but also for private education, which, despite being the best in the country, is still very poorly rated even when compared to the averages of other countries. In health, despite being a system recognized as efficient when considering the resources injected into it, there is dissatisfaction with the results obtained, compounded by the skimming that occurs due to the existence of two separate financing systems. Regarding pensions, the general perception is that they are insufficient, despite the fact that the AFPs have done the job they were entrusted with, as the average amounts paid are low. Despite the multiple commissions, reports, and bills sent to Congress, the reform of the system was not carried out on time, nor did it take into account all the recommendations made. Are all of the above issues the fault of the current Constitution? Probably not, but given the political climate, it could be a good time to at least talk about what we want, with what we have.
If you notice, I am not attempting to answer these questions. Our guest, Juan José Obach, has his own answers, and readers can consider them valid when deciding how to vote on September 4. But you may have a different assessment, with other answers and/or other considerations. I simply thought it was a good starting point for organizing the debate and thus make an informed decision ahead of the exit referendum.
