FOR someone like me and the thousands of Chileans who witnessed the bloody US-backed military coup of September 11 1973 and who have lived in exile here in Britain ever since, the vote on Sunday October 25 to reject decisively Pinochet’s pro-fascist constitution is extremely gratifying.

In fact, hundreds of Chileans and their descendants voted yesterday at the Chilean consulate in London, queueing for hours to do so. Similarly, exiles voted in many European capitals and cities to which Chileans fled for their lives in the terrifying aftermath of the brutal coup which killed the constitutional socialist president of Chile, Dr Salvador Allende.

It was British Hunter Hawker aircraft flown by the traitors in Chile’s air force that bombed the presidential Moneda Palace in Santiago that tragic day.

On Sunday, 77.85 per cent voted for Chile to have a new constitution, with 22.15 per cent against (ie for the current, dictatorship-era constitution). The right-wing government’s proposal (which was for the new constitution, if approved, to be drawn up by a body consisting of 50 per cent from currently sitting members of Parliament and 50 per cent from directly elected citizens), was also decisively rejected by almost 80 per cent of voters.

Thus the new constitution will be drawn up by a body elected by the people, not by sitting parliamentarians. There will be a second vote, held alongside municipal and gubernatorial elections in April next year, which will elect the members of the constitutional convention which will be responsible for drawing up the new constitution.

The vote will be held under the same rules as those for parliamentary elections and there are concerns that this might alter the balance of the constituent convention by over-representing political parties and under-representing the social movements that have been key to ongoing protests.

The plebiscite result is an immense victory for the Chilean people and its significance should not be underestimated. It shows that the vast majority of Chileans understand that, under Pinochet’s 1980 constitution, there can never be the democratic social change that is needed, because that constitution is heavily weighted in favour of the right wing, including the military.

This is why there was such a substantial vote against existing political-party parliamentarians having a big say in the drafting of a new constitution — because under both right-wing governments and centre-left governments, such as those headed by Michelle Bachelet, the people have not seen the deep changes they need to make their lives more tolerable.

Chile under the dictatorship (1973-1990) became the most unequal it had ever been. On the surface, Chile appears to the traveller as a modern, prosperous country, full of skyscrapers and elegant shopping malls. Even the shanty towns have largely disappeared in favour of tidy estates of small houses. Roads are paved and a modern motorway connects north and south of this long and narrow country.

But, as anyone will tell you, if you talk to street-sellers on the pavements, Chileans are up to their ears in debt. Everything has to be bought on credit, “on the never-never” as it was once called in Britain. They live and die in debt.

Under the Pinochet dictatorship and the governments that succeeded it from 1990 to the present, everything was privatised. Pensions (excepting those of military personnel) were privatised, leaving those public servants who had previously had decent state pensions in virtual poverty.

This transferred the savings of the people to private hands, where it became the source of their investments and subsequent wealth. The private pensions companies have enriched themselves at the public’s expense. Many Chilean professionals are still working into their 70s and 80s, as they fear being unable to live on their private pensions.

Water and electricity were privatised. Healthcare was handed to transnational health companies. Schools and universities were privatised and many have poor standards.

The copper industry, which had been nationalised in 1971 with all major parties voting in favour, was part-privatised: its importance to the economy and state coffers meant that it was impossible, even for Pinochet, to give it all away.

But practically everything else that it is possible to privatise has been privatised — and the rich have prospered as never before while wage-earners have seen their incomes decrease in value.

Readers may remember the protests in 2006 by schoolchildren, known as “the penguinos” because of their black and white uniforms. These were widespread school strikes up and down the country which lasted months.

The teenagers demanded free-travel passes and an end to the unjust system of private and poorly funded municipal schools which had proliferated. This was under the Bachelet government (a coalition called the New Majority).

The secondary schoolchildren won some important concessions and their mass protests gave many Chileans on the left a boost after the decades of living under the harsh dictatorship, when it was very hard to organise resistance.

Bachelet’s earlier government (1990-2010) (called la Concertacion, an alliance of centre and centre-left parties) had not really challenged the neoliberal and free-market agenda laid down by the dictatorship and aided by the 1980 Pinochet constitution.

Her government became discredited, despite the considerable personal following Bachelet had, as the daughter of a military general who had been tortured to death for refusing to support the fascist coup and who, herself, had suffered imprisonment. Widespread corruption scandals affecting the parties of the Concertacion and Bachelet’s own family circle further discredited the political system.

The fact that under the Bachelet governments, neoliberalism and privatisation flourished whilst people’s standard of living decreased led to a generalised disillusion with political parties — and this is reflected in Sunday’s vote. The option that won was the one which means that the new constitution will not be drafted by currently sitting parliamentarians from existing political parties.

Unfortunately, the Communist Party of Chile, which formed part of president Bachelet’s New Majority government, has suffered from this generalised disillusionment with all political parties, although some of its leaders, such as Recoleta Mayor Daniel Jadue, are among the only politicians the current protest movement approves of.

The people’s anger at the lack of change under all governments over the last three decades grew and led to important protests culminating in the mass protests of October last year, when every province and every big town and city throughout the country saw huge demonstrations the like of which had never been seen before in Chile.

I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when seeing videos sent us by relatives and friends of these demonstrations last October showing wide streets and avenues packed with demonstrators as far as the eye could see, in cities all over the country.

The reaction of the police and military shocked the nation: police seemed to be targeting demonstrators’ eyes. Bloomberg reported that 140 people had suffered eye injuries in those protests. As of January 31 2020, Chile’s human-rights organisation said 29 people had suffered the complete loss of vision in one or both eyes after being shot by hardened rubber bullets or tear-gas grenades fired at their heads.

The New York Times reported that at least 285 people had suffered “severe eye trauma” during the October 2019 protests. Pinera illegally sent the army into the streets, where they killed at least a dozen people, before the refusal of the High Command to participate further in the repression forced him to withdraw them.

The protests of last year died down as the summer holiday period began (January and February in Chile) and then paused due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But it was those protests that forced the current right-wing Pinera government to agree to hold a plebiscite on whether or not Chile should have a new constitution.

Originally scheduled for April 26 2020, the date was postponed due to the pandemic to last Sunday, resulting in a nearly 80 per cent majority for a new, more democratic, more progressive constitution.

President Allende’s prophetic words recorded shortly before his death on September 11 1973 have, at least to some extent, come true:

“I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Others will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. But remember that, much sooner than later, great avenues will once again be opened, along which free people will walk to build a better society.”