Chile referendum: Voters decisively rejecting a new, egalitarian constitution

The new charter envisioned a dramatic shift to the left in the South American nation, expanding the role of government and calling for an economic model that would narrow inequalities and help lift up the poor.

But for many Chileans, the proposed changes were too drastic. With more than 95 percent of ballot boxes tallied Sunday night, about 62 percent of voters rejected the charter, while 38 percent approved it, according to Chile’s electoral authority.

The results of the vote brought an end to an ambitious democratic experiment that began as an attempt to unify a country in crisis. In 2019, Chile’s streets erupted in protest, powered by working- and middle-class people struggling with high prices and low wages. In a society long held up as a symbol of prosperity in the region, thousands of Chileans poured out their anger at a government they felt had forgotten them.

Politicians negotiated a solution to ease the unrest: They pledged to write a new constitution, replacing the version written under the brutal military regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The following year, Chileans overwhelmingly voted in favor of drafting a new charter.

But instead of uniting the nation, the process ended up dividing it once again.

The wide margin of defeat delivered a painful blow to the country’s young leftist president, Gabriel Boric, Chile’s most left-leaning leader since Salvador Allende, who died by suicide during the 1973 military coup that toppled his socialist government.

Boric, a 36-year-old former lawmaker who helped negotiate the deal to write the constitution, famously pledged to voters last year that “if Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave.” But the proposed constitution’s failure will make it harder for the president to carry out his bold agenda.

Now he and his country will be left to start from scratch, it appeared Sunday night. To write a new charter, constitutional experts say, Chileans will probably have to bring the matter to congress, launch a new election for a new assembly, and begin the drafting process anew.

A do-over was the exact outcome many Chileans had hoped for. In a Santiago hotel on Sunday night, a group of the charter’s opponents celebrated by waving Chilean flags in the air and chanting, “Chile is, and will be, a country in liberty!”

The 388-article document faced intense criticism that it was too long, too left-leaning, and too radical in its economic, judicial and political proposals. Like other closely watched referendums around the world — from Colombia’s peace deal to Brexit — the debate was…