The way to a new constitution

Abstract

The article analyzes the social explosion that occurred in October 2019 in Chile, which is manifested by important social forces that demand significant political and social changes, as well as a new Constitution. This mobilization of civil society involved an awareness by the Government and the National Congress of the serious social problems not assumed in government policy, which will lead to a parliamentary political agreement that assumes the exhaustion of the constitutional system and the development of a constituent process, which is regulated in an epigraph of chapter XV of the Constitution, which regulates said process in three stages, the initial plebiscite (referendum), in which citizens must decide if they want a new Constitution and must choose for the type of convention that will debate and approve it; the second stage, regulates the electoral process of the conventional ones and the regulation, functions and limitations of the convention that will elaborate and propose the text of the new Constitution; and the third stage, the development of the plebiscite (referendum) in which the citizenry must pronounce on the approval or rejection of the text prepared by the convention. Finally, the author makes some comments on said constituent process.