The Constitutional Council of Chile leans against abortion and in favor of mixed health and pension systems

MADRID, 8 May. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The victory of the right in the elections on Sunday to designate the new Constitutional Council of Chile will be decisive when it comes to agreeing on the drafting of a new Magna Carta, in which the right to abortion will not foreseeably be included and will bet on health systems or pensions that also favor the presence of private entities.

The far-right Republican Party, founded by former presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, has emerged as the great winner of the event. "Today is the first day of a better future for our country, it is the first day of a new beginning for Chile," Kast proclaimed after the official results were released.

It will have 22 of the 50 seats that will make up the Council, which is now responsible for drawing up a Constitution that can replace the one that has existed since the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. It will be the second attempt, after the failure of the first plebiscite held in 2022, largely due to the rejection that broad conservative sectors showed to this text.

Six out of ten of the candidates elected in this second process are against the previous project, according to a survey carried out by the newspaper 'La Tercera'. The Republican Party then proclaimed that, if it goes ahead, the text would cause "irreparable damage" to Chile, despite the fact that some of the demands of the left fell by the wayside in a process marked by political polarization.

One of the aspects that more progressive sectors did manage to introduce was the right to abortion, but now around 60 percent of the new constituents are inclined for the Magna Carta not to introduce any progress in this regard.

Regarding health, the previous draft stated that "the National Health System is universal, public and integrated". However, now only 12 percent of the winners of Sunday's elections believe that the priority is to build a powerful public body and instead they are inclined to guarantee private health insurance institutions (isapres).

This vision is also replicated in the case of pensions, since one in three advocates keeping the system as it is and more than 47 percent believe that citizens should have full facilities to choose between a public system and the administrators. of pension funds (AFP).

The Government of Gabriel Boric, however, has tried to separate the process related to the Constitution from the daily political life of Chile, something that the president in the campaign already suggested and that, after the dissemination of the results, the main spokesperson wanted to point out. of the Executive, Camila Vallejo. The latter is waiting for the new elected officials to be capable of preparing and meeting the demands of the citizenry, for the sake of "a constitutional proposal that this time manages to represent the vast majority," reports 'El Mercurio'.