AFP :
Chile officially starts writing a new constitution Sunday to replace the one it inherited from the era of dictator Augusto Pinochet and is widely blamed for deep social inequalities that gave rise to deadly protests in 2019.
The country’s biggest protests in 30 years of democracy won Chileans a referendum last October in which a majority voted for a new constitution to be drawn up by a body of elected members. This 155-member body, elected in May and called a “constitutional convention,” will on Sunday officially start its work of crafting a new Magna Carta for a new Chile.
It is a representative collection of Chileans — lawyers, teachers, a housewife, scientists, social workers, vets, writers, journalists, actors and doctors — many of whom had themselves partaken in the protests. The youngest is 21. Half are women, by design, and 17 seats were reserved for representatives of indigenous groups.
The assembly holds the power to draft a new path for the country after decades of political and economic power concentrated in the hands of an elite, many from the right and defenders of the old constitution’s free-market guarantees.
“They come from the same schools, they go to the same three universities and most of them have lived in Santiago, in the most affluent neighborhoods,” Marcela Rios, assistant representative of the United Nations Development Program in Chile, told AFP of the old guard. – Diversity presents challenges –
