Democracy has not been the same for some decades now. And that is how it should be understood. We do not know if it can be updated and which system will be the replacement. That is the scenario for the constituent process of Chile.
It is stated that “there are no countries with stable constitutional regimes, rather the opposite has been the rule. The Law at the mercy of caudillos, but also of presumed democrats by the consent of parliamentarians and judges. Likewise, reference is made to the political origin, legal scheme, nature of the Constituent Assembly, character of representation and citizen participation. Heterogeneity, the pattern in Latin American women. It seems opportune, then, to investigate if what corresponds first are “the constitutional conventions” for the conformation of the peoples, or if it would be more pragmatic that they assimilate acceptable levels of social equality for a certain degree of citizenship. The Law of Laws is used to resolve crises both in dictatorships and in incipient democracies. Differentiating marking Dictators access power arbitrarily and the latter by inducing a people to vote, which wants it less and less. The latter, a peculiar characteristic of unenthusiastic democracies. Rather, in decline.
The constituents in the formal sense have as their purpose the creation of “a democratic social order, which has been achieved by the countries, “the prosperous ones”, unfortunately, very few. It is known that the Constitution is the “fundamental law of a State”, in order to regulate the exercise of public power and the rights and duties of its citizens. Unfortunately, both desires continue as such, and it can be affirmed that democracy, the constituents and the Magna Carta are seriously in debt with respect to their promises, specifically, in the exercise of public power and the generation of social welfare. Drafting a Constitution is an arduous task, but putting it into practice is much greater.
Democracy looks like a soccer ball that has to cross the opposite goal, to the glory of the winning team. Chileans seem to have President Boric as a striker to collect “the penalty”, it is up to the people to determine if the goal is legitimate, valid and not questionable according to the guidelines of advanced societies. “Approve or reject” are the options for the people of Chile, in September 2022. Ricardos Lagos, one of the presidents of “the democratic wave” after the Pinochet dictatorship, has expressed that “the constituent process must continue after the plebiscite.
In the 20th century, the constitutional vocation has been demoralized, because it has been attended by those who found out that it existed one day and it was convenient to take advantage of it, as in the case of Chávez in Venezuela, where the constitutional proposal is collected by academics on silver trays and that the latter takes advantage of to establish the most efficient path to disaster in the last decades in the world. He is not born into the government, rather out of it. A pompous and deceitful constitution was the result. And quite far from the level of citizenship of its recipients.
In Chile, an alleged social inequality and the succession of the head of state between Augusto Pinochet himself, Patricio Aylwin, Eduardo Frei Ruiz, Ricardo Lagos, Michele Bachelet and Sebastián Pinera, some twice in a row, were causes for the erosion of the democratic bases that tried to rescue themselves after the apparently communist government of Salvador Allende. The agreement of a “Constituent Convention” does not cease to raise “why and what for”, since this depends exclusively on those who command and in the Chilean case on the government of Gabriel Boric and his Congress. It will be optimal if it boosts the social equality that democracies postulate and bad, otherwise.
An exponential list of “human rights” is most likely to fill the pages of the new Magna Carta in the southern country and God willing, since the methodology of the fundamental texts in the Americas is to appease popular expectations with a list to stimulate the vote. It is currently the written offer in favor of the excluded, in politics and in access to participation, the latter in the event that parties practice true internal democracy. And not the detestable “chiefdom.”
President Boric and the assemblymen in the Constituent Convention have the challenge of making a good government, with equitable participation in job opportunities, commercial, financial and other activities for the benefit of the middle and lower classes. “It could be done with the current Constitution of Chile”, of course:
1. Then why a constituent?
2. Is the 2005 Magna Carta so obsolete?
3. Will the Convention prevent Boric from enacting communism in Chile?
4. Is it a well-founded fear due to the atypical regimes in almost the entire continent?, and
5. Will it be done in a democracy?
The questions, formulated under the unequivocal conviction that the Constitution is not a panacea for the demands of Chileans. The answers, therefore, complicated.
In short, the constituents, it cannot be denied, that they maintain their validity. They demand, however, a real citizenship, capable of understanding it, building it, defending it and living it. They are a path for the consolidation of peoples.
Trying them is not crazy.
That is the challenge.
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