Fynsa
This week, I had the privilege of hosting the webinar “Let’s Talk About Chile | New Constitution: The Country’s Future from a Political and Economic Perspective”, organized by our company and featuring the director of Horizontal, Juan José Obach, as a guest speaker. Our goal was to provide a broad overview of what we believe to be the main political and economic aspects included in the draft and their potential consequences. In this column, I won’t be summarizing 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 an evaluation of the Constitution should consider only political and economic aspects, but for our purposes, we believe this is a good starting point.
The first question concerns the origins of this entire process. The social unrest, which took place on October 18, 2019, has causes that do not stem from that $30 subway fare increase, but rather with other, much deeper issues that had been festering for a long time and that the country’s elites were unable or unwilling to address. Given this fragmentation, it was believed that a new constitution—one that would incorporate all of the country’s perspectives—was a necessary condition for building a new social contract, as defined by Rousseau.
The second has to do with representation. Since the return to democracy, the country has implemented several reforms, with mixed results, in an effort to improve the distribution of power so that, depending on their preferences, every citizen would feel more or less heard when decisions are made. Regardless of our own assessment of our electoral system and the elected representatives, there was dissatisfaction among a significant portion 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 is also a matter for the Constitution.
And the third question—well, it stems from the citizens’ “list of demands” voiced during the protests that accompanied the social uprising, which called for better education, better healthcare, better pensions, and so on. Despite the numerous educational reforms implemented since the 1990s, we have not been able to improve our standing in the various international rankings we are evaluated against, ranking, for example, near the bottom among OECD countries. Moreover, this issue extends not only to public education but also to private education, which—despite being the best in the country—is still rated very poorly even when compared to the averages of other countries. In health care, despite being a system recognized as efficient given the resources allocated to it, there is dissatisfaction with the results achieved, compounded by the fragmentation caused by the existence of two separate funding systems. Regarding pensions, the general perception is that they are insufficient, even though the AFPs have carried out the work for which they were entrusted, since the average amounts paid are low. Despite the numerous commissions, reports, and bills submitted to Congress, the reform of the system was not carried out in a timely manner, 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 have been a good time to at least discuss what we wanted, based on what we had.
If you notice, I’m not trying to answer these questions. Our guest, Juan José Obach, has his own answers, and readers may find them helpful in deciding how to vote on September 4. But you might have a different assessment, with other answers and/or other considerations. It simply seemed like a good starting point to me for organizing the debate and, in this way, make an informed decision ahead of the exit referendum.
