There are two major electoral events this Sunday. One is Serbia’s early election, which I don’t have time to write about just now; we’ll have a look at the results next week. In the meantime you can read a good preview by the BBC’s Guy Delauney.
The other is the Chilean constitutional referendum, which is the latest step in an interesting saga that began with the mass anti-government protests of 2019. The then centre-right government of president Sebastian Piñera agreed to the protesters’ demands to move towards a new constitution – the old one dates from the era of the Pinochet dictatorship, although it has been amended a number of times – and a constitutional convention was duly elected in May 2021.
Because Piñera’s government was deeply unpopular, left of centre parties won a big majority in the convention, and they proceeded to draft a noticeably left-wing document. They were supported by the new radical left president, Gabriel Boric, elected to replace Piñera in December 2021. But voters quickly cooled on the left, and the draft constitution was heavily rejected in a referendum in September 2022.
So the government went back to the drawing board, but without giving up on the idea of wholesale replacement of the constitution. A more streamlined process was agreed on and a new smaller convention was elected last May. This time, aided by increased turnout, it was the right that won a big majority, with the Trumpist far right in the lead.
The right then proceeded to over-reach in exactly the way their opponents had, drafting a constitution that embodied their political preferences rather than trying to reach a consensus. President Boric, who has learnt some moderation through experience, urged them “not to make the mistake that we made,” but they ignored him.
So on Sunday the new right-wing draft is being put to referendum, and unless the polls are badly wrong it will meet the same fate as its predecessor. Every poll for months has shown the No vote with a double-digit lead, and this is just the sort of process in which undecided voters are likely to opt for No. (Voting is compulsory, at least in theory.)
With partisan constitution-making failing on both sides, perhaps then the politicians will opt for a process of finding broad agreement. Or perhaps they will decide to just stick with the existing constitution, which seems to work pretty well.
The World is Not Enough 
I can’t believe there are many people in any country who are familiar with the provisions of their country’s constitution, which makes it a little curious that anti-government protesters should have taken up a new constitution as a major demand; it could be, of course, that only a very small number were deeply committed to this and managed to get a larger number to follow their lead.
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