Military Tutelage Fades Away From Chile’s Constitutional Life

A day before Chile’s 195th Independence Day celebrations, President Ricardo Lagos signed into Law the country’s revised Constitution that does away with authoritarian enclaves inherited from the military dictatorship 1980 Constitution. The signature and name of former dictator General Augusto Pinochet’s name no longer appears the country’s Constitutional text replaced today by the signature of the democratically-elected President Lagos.

It took legislators fifteen years to do away with the major irritants in the Pinochet Constitution. Right-wing Alianza legislators feared if done away with the authoritarian enclaves the country would fall into chaos. The Alianza opposition felt secure with the military tutelage filibustering any change to the Constitution.

Lagos called the signing of the new Constitution a “historical step.” The constitutional reforms, 58 in total, allows the President: to remove the heads of the Armed Forces; the National Security Council -a military dominated Council- lost its powers remaining only as an advisory body; nine appointed senators -including three military appointed senators- are done away next March when a new Congress convenes.

“The new Constitutional text responds to the desire and democratic spirit of all Chileans, uniting the country with this democratic text,” President Lagos said.

The reforms were made possible as the printed edition of this week’s The Economist rightly points out, as the fall out of 1998 Pinochet London arrest on human rights crimes.

The reforms reduces the presidential mandate from six to four years, it removes the electoral law from the Constitution, but it failed to do away with an electoral system that favours a parliamentary tie excluding political parties or movements not part of the two main political blocks; the ruling centre-left Concertación coalition and the opposition right-wing Alianza.

The signing ceremony that took place this morning in the Orange Grove Backyard of the Presidential Palace, The Moneda, was attended by all elected officials, government ministers, members of the judiciary and local and foreign guests.

But away from the presidential palace, Communist and Humanist party members protested calling the constitutional reform just a make-over of Pinochet’s Constitution demanding the country drafts a new constitution and a major reform to the electoral law that to date has excluded them from electing a parliamentarian.

The electoral system, its flaws and discrimination is something better left for a completely different column, but the opposition held out in changing the electoral system because as The Economist explained: Chile has an “electoral system under which both houses of Congress are elected in two-member constituencies, with the coalition that comes second needing only a third of the vote to secure one of the two seats.” Hence, creating virtual ties where to date the right-wing Alianza has secured a third of the votes, yet it can elect nearly half of the seats in Congress.

Despite the flaws, the constitutional reforms has moved the country away from its authoritarian straight-jacket giving elected officials the democratic tools to freely govern and returning the Armed Forces to the barracks.