The Chileans will be called to decide in April 2020 whether they wish to revise the Constitution inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). The Senate Speaker, Jaime Quintana, announced Friday, November 15 the holding of a referendum on this issue when the country has been shaken for almost a month by a violent social crisis.
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After several hours of negotiations in Parliament, the government coalition and the main opposition parties signed an "Agreement for Peace and the new Constitution", which provides for a referendum with two questions: one on the revision or not of the Constitution and the other, if any, on the method for writing it, explained Jaime Quintana.
Chileans will have to decide whether this task should go to a "joint constitutional commission" or a "convention or constituent assembly".
The members of this editorial body would then be selected in October 2020, together with the municipal and regional elections.
"This is a response from politics in the most noble sense of the term, the policy that thinks of Chile, which takes its destiny in hand and which assumes its responsibilities," said Jaime Quintana, member of the Party for Democracy (opposition center-left), alongside other leaders of Chilean political parties, with the exception of the Communist Party.
"We are happy to have reached an agreement that marks a victory against violence," said Jacqueline van Rysselberghe, president of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI, conservative), a pillar of the coalition supporting President Sebastian. Piñera.
The agreement came in a Congress where no bloc has a two-thirds majority needed for a constitutional revision and after two months of violent popular protests that have killed 22 people and injured thousands.
With AFP