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Gifts from The Morning Star
Rapid progress in Chile at last
Decades after the brutal dictator Pinochet left power, having butchered the legitimate socialist government, a historic plebiscite has voted to remove his right-wing constitution. Now is the time for the left to surge forward with a new social contract, writes KATE CLARK
A woman reads a newspaper showing the results of the previous day's referendum in favor of rewriting the nation's constitution in Santiago, Chile

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.

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