A revolutionary constitution for Chile and for all humanity

We spoke about it with Tomás Hirsch, Deputy Hirsch of Acción Humanista and, above all, a political activist who has followed the whole issue of the Constitution.

Humanists have always put the need for a new constitution in Chile at the top of their demands. Tomás, could you give a brief summary of how we arrived at this plebiscite?

This plebiscite is the result of a long struggle of the people of Chile, of various social organisations and political parties. For many this originates in the social outburst of 18 October 2019, however this began long before. Already when the Constitution of the dictatorship was installed in blood and fire in 1980, we began to organise and precipitate the various social movements and political parties to have a democratic constitution. Moreover, that was one of the commitments of the first government afterwards, to put an end to the 1980 Constitution, which was not fulfilled.

In our case, for us as humanists it was always one of the fundamental demands for which we were precipitating; that is why when I was a presidential candidate, we made that gesture that was engraved in Chile’s memory of throwing Pinochet’s Constitution in the trash. And that act, which scandalised some powerful people and those who formed part of the political, economic and military elite of our country, had a profound effect on our people.

That mobilisation continued for decades, until after the outbreak of October 2019, as a way of giving course and channeling the very diverse social demands, the conviction was reached that the issue here was not to fix one or two aspects of the current legislation, but to go to the heart of the model and that meant assuming that we have been living for decades under a constitution that is profoundly anti-democratic both in its origin and in its content, that does not guarantee any rights, that establishes brutal differences between a small minority and the great majorities of the country. It was then that an agreement was reached to move towards a new constitution generated in democracy. A constitutional convention was elected to draft a proposal for a year and it is this proposal that will be voted on 4 September with two options: I approve or I reject. Thus, in an initial plebiscite, 80% of the voters voted in favour of a new Constitution and the same 80% voted in favour of it being drafted by convention members elected for that purpose and not by parliamentarians. Thus began the work of this Convention, the first in the world to be completely parity-based, with 50% men and 50% women, with a broad participation of representatives of the 11 native peoples and with an important presence of independents.