The convention drafting Chile's new Magna Carta approved on Wednesday the idea of replacing the Senate with a new alternative body whose powers are yet to be defined, the “Chamber of Regions”, one of the most controversial issues of the constituent process.
By 104 votes in favour, 42 against and 6 abstentions, the instance gave the green light to the idea of creating this new body, which would complement another chamber, on which no details have been established, but which is expected to be similar to the current Chamber of Deputies.
According to the text, “the Chamber of Regions is a deliberative, joint and plurinational body of regional representation, responsible for concurring to the formation of laws according to regional agreement and to exercise the other powers entrusted by this Constitution”.
On the other hand, there was no consensus on the composition or scope of the laws of regional agreement or the other powers of the body, which were initially going to be less than those of the current Senate, but which must now be discussed again in the Committee on Political Systems.
The formula of the Chamber of Regions was adopted as an intermediate way to unblock the entrenched discussions between the bicameralist constituents, who chose to maintain the current system, and the unicameralists, who favored keeping only the deputies.
Nor did the idea of modifying the current Chamber of Deputies to turn it into a “deliberative and plurinational Congress of Deputies” that would exercise legislative power and the task of supervising the president of the republic did not succeed.
These have been some of the most thorny issues of the constituent process, which was born as a political way to dismantle the wave of massive protests that began in 2019, a crisis that left about thirty people dead, thousands injured and shook the foundations of Chile, one of the most stable countries in Latin America.
If approved in the exit plebiscite, on September 4, the new Constitution would replace the current one, inherited from the regime of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and considered by many as the origin of the country's great inequalities by its neoliberal court.
With information from EFE
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