TOMORROW around 15 million Chileans will have to vote to select the 50 members of the Constitutional Council that will draft a new proposal for a constitution, after a majority of 62 to 38 per cent had voted to rejected the first proposal for a new and radical Magna Carta on September 4 2022.

Five separate lists of candidates are presented for election. Unity for Chile (made up of the Communist, Socialist, Humanist Action and Broad Front parties) and All for Chile (which brings together two social democratic parties of the Party for Democracy and the Radical Party, and the Christian Democrats) are the two representing the ruling coalition of the Gabriel Boric government.

The opposition lists are formed by the traditional right-wing parties (Renovacion Nacional, Union Democrata Independiente and Evolucion Politica).

The ultimate goal of each of these forces is to elect no less than 20 of the members of the council, because otherwise it will be practically impossible to influence the drafting of constitutional text — 30, however, guarantees the majority, which would decisively help determine the political contents of the future Fundamental Charter.

According to almost all polls and most political and electoral analyses, Sunday’s election is too close to call. The election system mimics the senatorial election heavily dependent on regional constituency vote — a mechanism that has significantly benefited the right-wing parties in all the post-dictatorship elections.

This time too, factors such as citizen disaffection with these elections, widespread right-wing disinformation among the population about the process and its aims and, finally, the call for annulment by some of the more radical political sectors are now rife.

The failure of the previous Magna Carta drafting process represented a major defeat for the progressive, transformative and left-wing forces and, ultimately, a telling blow to the government of Boric.

The process was a forceful dispute over the proposed model of society and indeed country. It was traumatising.

The right and the conservatives were, however, able to go on the offensive, question what they call “a refoundation of the country,” and to go against the process of transformations, including reforms encouraged carried out by the current government.

Everything indicates that what happened in the 2022 plebiscite is still having an impact on this election.

After the previous process, the government, Congress and the majority of institutional political parties insisted that the constitutional path had to continue and that it had to be reconfigured, albeit retaining the intention of ditching the entire constitution inherited from the civil-military dictatorship.

There were political sectors, above all on the left and in the ruling coalition, who called for the issue to be put on ice, arguing that “the time for the constitution had passed.” It was posited that this work towards another constituent assembly should be left to a more promising moment in the future.

But in the majority of the ruling coalition, starting with Boric’s government, the idea took hold that it was necessary to insist on changing the constitution now, reasoning that in the 2021 plebiscite 78 per cent of Chileans agreed to scrap the Pinochet constitution.

After victory in September the right wing saw that there was an opportunity to impose its own conditions and move towards a regressive constitutional text, limiting its scope of citizen and economic rights, in line with the conservative doctrine. There was even talk of a “Pinochetist constitution 2.0 – adapted to the new times.”

An agreement was then signed between the government side and the opposition in which it was agreed that the Congress — the most questioned of institutions by the Chilean population — would play a preponderant role, as would the established political parties.

The social, trade union, indigenous, feminist, cultural and so-called “independent” movements were excluded from any formal representation or direct participation.

Hence the Congress appointed an “experts commission” and an “admissibility committee” — selected via a system of political quotas — tasked with supervising the deliberations and approving what the Constitutional Council ends up proposing.

In essence both bodies adjudicating in the drafting of the new Magna Carta were not selected by a democratic process of consultation but by specifically excluding the general voter.

The progressive, social democratic and left-wing parties with parliamentary representation argued that these were not the ideal conditions, but that it was necessary in order to achieve a constitutional text that would enshrine in law a democratic, social state guaranteeing widespread civil rights in Chile.

Within social movements, among intellectuals, civil society organisations, the feminist movement, the world of arts, non-parliamentary left-wing parties and the indigenous peoples there was talk of “a democratic fraud” and “a rigged constitutional process,” and a call was made “not to endorse a rigged process.”

A new proposal for a Magna Carta will emerge and will be put before the people in a plebiscite in December 2023.

It is widely recognised that the road to a left victory is an uphill one. The progressive and left-wing forces have accepted the strategic defeat of the previous plebiscite and the call has gone out to raise this option once again before the electorate and inspire it to aspire to a constitutional text that is as democratic and progressive as politically feasible.

However, there are prevailing predictions that the right and the extreme right will do rather well, and could even secure the strategic majority of 30, which would leave the new constitutional text entirely at their mercy.

Tomorrow’s vote will define the political course and institutional shape of the country for years to come, possibly decades. It will substantially impact on the whole of society, and with it bring uncertainty as to how the Chileans and the social movements will respond in the medium and long-term.

On Sunday night we will learn what political direction a majority of Chileans want their country to take — for better or worse.

Hugo Guzman is the editor of El Siglo/ The Century, the Chilean Communist Party’s newspaper.