Chileans will vote December 17 on replacing the country’s dictatorship-era constitution with a new text drafted by a right-wing-dominated council, President Gabriel Boric announced Tuesday.
It will be the country’s second vote on a new constitution in as many years, after a version drafted by a different body failed in September 2022.
That draft had called for larger social support programs and included provisions to enshrine abortion and Indigenous peoples’ rights.
Right-wing parties won control of the second drafting council in a May vote, and have created a 216-article text that largely maintains the country’s free-market system, but has drawn criticism over its approach to social issues, especially abortion and migration.
“The December 17 plebiscite is officially called and I invite all our compatriots to educate themselves and participate by fulfilling the unavoidable civic duty of voting,” said the leftist Boric during a ceremony in the capital Santiago.
Voting in the referendum is compulsory for Chilean adults.
Chile’s current constitution has undergone several reforms since its adoption in 1980 under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinchot.
Despite the removal of most authoritarian provisions, Chileans are still divided over maintaining the final traces of the dictatorship that saw thousands killed, tortured or disappeared.
The government of Boric’s predecessor, conservative Sebastian Pinera, agreed to hold a referendum on a new constitution in a bid to ease mass protests that broke out in October 2019 against social inequality.
Polls predict the latest draft proposal will fail, and Boric has ruled out a new rewrite attempt during his term, which ends in March 2026.
Among the articles that have generated most controversy is an order for the expulsion “in the shortest time possible” of foreigners who enter Chile “clandestinely or through unauthorized routes.”
The left has also alleged that the new constitution would allow for changes to the nation’s current abortion law, which permits abortions in cases of rape, non-viability of the fetus and when the mother’s life is at risk.
