Brazil & Southern Cone - 26 October 2004

On 6 October the Chilean senate approved the first significant changes to the country's constitution since it was amended by referendum in 1989. Until now, Chilean lawmakers had been bound by the constitution written by General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. Although approved by plebiscite in 1980, the constitution had little democratic validity: it sought to perpetuate the armed forces' political power by determining that nine non-elected senators, four of them former military and police commanders, would sit alongside 26 (now 38) elected ones. It also gave former presidents (including General Pinochet) a senate seat for life and forbade elected presidents from dismissing military commanders-in-chief or the chief of police.

The changes agreed will eliminate the positions of appointed senators and senators-for-life, among them Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, who will have to resign their positions by 11 March 2006. It will also restore to the president the power of dismissing the head of the armed forces or the police. The amendments will also take into account the Chilean diaspora caused by the Pinochet dictatorship by granting citizenship to children born outside the country to Chilean parents. Currently Chile's senate is made up of 38 members elected for an eight-year term (half of which are renewed every four years), and another nine appointed directly by the outgoing government and the supreme court.

The decision to amend the constitution represented a remarkable degree of cooperation between the country's two ideological powerhouses, the ruling leftwing Concertación coalition and the rightwing Alianza por Chile (APC). Although Concertación has been in power since 1990, changing the constitution was rendered extremely difficult by some cunning safeguards put in place by the dictatorship's lawyers. Not only was a two-thirds majority required in both houses of congress to effect an amendment, but a binominal electoral system compounded the improbability of achieving a consensus. Each constituency elects two members to each house, but to get both seats a party or coalition must get double the vote of the runner-up. Since 1990 Concertación has never managed to win enough seats to push through any reforms.

Problems ahead
Although the bill still has to gain the approval of the lower house, few expect difficulties there. Problems remain, however; not least in the persistence of the binominal electoral system. There was also no agreement about the length of time the president should serve: Concertación is inclined to shorten the present six-year mandate but the APC is divided on the issue. The replacement of the non-elected senators with elected ones, though indubitably healthy from a democratic perspective, is bound to create tensions within the coalitions when individual parties fight for their seats in 2006.