Chile will hold a referendum on its new Constitution on September 4

Chileans will be called to vote on September 4 if they approve or reject the new draft Constitution which is still being drafted, according to the Government’s forecast, which observes with “concern” the apparent loss of support for the Constitutional Convention created ‘ex profeso’ to reform the Magna Carta.

The text, considered a key point to turn the page on the wave of protests that began in Chile in October 2019, is still in the debate phase, but the General Secretariat of the Presidency has already confirmed the consultation for the date on which they used to hold presidential elections until the overthrow of Salvador Allende.

The Executive, which is already working on practical voting issues, has explained that for the Electoral Service (Servel) to be able to complete all work related to registration and advertising“is set as the date for the plebiscite in which the new constitutional text must be approved or rejected next Sunday, September 4, 2022.”

The vote will be mandatory, as stipulated in the current Constitution, and in it the citizens will decide if they support the text that comes out of the Convention. These constituents have early July to deliver the draft and, a few days later, the president, Gabriel Boric, will make official by decree the date of the plebiscite, to be held after 60 days, on the corresponding first Sunday, according to the newspaper ‘El Mercurio’.

The polls, however, reflect a certain erosion in terms of citizen support for the Constitutional Convention and, by extension, for the draft they are preparing. Boric himself has considered these polls “worrying”, in which he sees “a wake-up call”.

The president has appealed during an official visit to Argentina to “seek the greatest transversality and breadth possible”, in such a way that the Constitution that emerges is “a meeting point”. In this sense, he has stressed that it is “one of the most important processes in Chile” and has separated it from the current government, assuming that the Magna Carta can mark the future of the country for decades.