lunes 4 octubre, 2021
This is the first edition of the Bulletin of the Constitutional Monitor, a newsletter prepared by Centro de Estudios Publicos aimed at reporting on the ongoing Chilean constituent process. This introductory edition will address three topics: (i) the installation of the Constitutional Convention, (ii) the preliminary organization that the Convention has given itself, and (iii) highlights of the Convention’s initial work. As this edition went online, the Convention was discussing its final rules of procedure, which are expected to be enacted by October 18th.
1 / Installation of the Convention
The first resolution passed by the Convention upon its installation was the election of its Leadership, composed by a President and a Vice-President. In order to win, candidates needed to poll the votes of an absolute majority of the Convention’s Plenary composed of 155 members. The elected President was Elisa Loncon (representative of the Mapuche people) and as Vice-President was Jaime Bassa (member of Frente Amplio, a left-wing coalition).
This election illustrated some of the Constitutional Convention’s key features: gender parity and the existence of 17 reserved seats for indigenous peoples’ representatives. It also revealed the strong presence of scholars in the Convention’s leadership: both Loncon and Bassa are university professors with advanced academic degrees earned at foreign universities.
Since its opening session, the Constitutional Convention (CC) has been supported by civil servants employed by Congress to aid with its legislative work, whose vast experience has helped the CC to fulfill with its responsibilities and make up for the lack of rules through effective and sound parliamentary practices. The latter development has been important as from the outset the CC has performed its tasks and duties with considerable autonomy from the executive and legislative branches.
2 / Preliminary organization of the Convention
Deputy Vice-Presidencies
In addition to its representative role before the traditional branches of government, the Leadership has also played a leading role in proposing rules and procedures for the CC. An example of this active rule-making role can be found in the enlargement of the Leadership into a collegiate body with the addition of seven new deputy vice-presidencies. This proposal was met with another coming from the indigenous peoples’ representatives requesting two additional and reserved vice-presidential seats. The enlargement of the CC’s Leadership from two to nine members was approved by the Plenary and the seven new deputy vice-presidents were elected at the end of July. Thus, the nine-member Leadership is made up as follows: five women (two of which belong to reserved seats for indigenous’ representatives) and four men.
This composition of the CC’s executive positions reflects part of the criteria which has characterized the organization of the CC, which also have been present in the organization of the debates and rules for requesting the floor hitherto. In both settings these criteria have tended to correct the representativeness of the CC according to factors such as gender, plurinationality and territoriality, rather than by assigning positions or alternating turns to speak on a first-come-first-served basis. Moreover, the increase in the number of reserved indigenous seats on the Leadership is illustrative of an expansive trend towards the over-recognition of indigenous peoples in the CC’s organization/bodies.
Regarding the appointment of the seven deputy vice-presidencies, instead of following a majority system of election, these positions were nominated according to a system of sponsorships by members of the CC. The minimum number of required sponsorships varied depending on whether the candidates were representatives of indigenous peoples, where a lower percentage of supporters was required in comparison to the remaining members of the CC.
Provisional Committees
As of the second week since its installation, the CC began to pass «basic rules» for its provisional operation until its permanent by-laws were adopted. These rules provided for three committees which, within a given period, had to submit their proposals to the Plenary on the following matters:
During its third week of operation, the Convention established five additional committees, which were also required to submit their proposals to the Plenary within 30 calendar days on the following matters:
In accordance with this form of provisional work, the CC’s design evolved as illustrated by the following organizational chart:
Internal organization of the Committees
Each committee is led by a coordination unit, composed of two members of the CC. Each coordination unit has fulfilled the gender-parity criterion in a strict sense, that is, one man and one woman. Nonetheless, the coordination of the Decentralization Committee departed from the previous understanding, choosing two women as coordinators. Here, the gender-parity criterion was interpreted as a minimum rather than as maximum. The committees are also supported by congressional staff for the purpose of acting as their secretaries.
Emerging issues affecting the Convention’s preliminary organization
The abovementioned division of responsibilities has not been exempted from difficulties. It is possible to identify overlaps between the responsibilities to be fulfilled by different committees, including what could be perceived as a temptation to become engaged in matters beyond the CC’s scope, by attempting to exert symbolic pressure over other branches of government. An example of the CC’s internvention in ordinary politics was the statement on “prisoners of the social outburst” referring to the disturbances that took place on October 18th, 2019 in Chile. Similarly, members of the CC made public and critical statements regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).
An example which merged both technical and political issues affecting the CC’s work can be found in the non-transitory and substantive nature of the Human Rights Committee. Most of its responsibilites trigger a decision-making conundrum because substantive or constitutional rules must be voted by 2/3 of the CC’s members, whereas adjective or procedural rules may be enacted with the approval of a simple majority.[1] Thus, the Human Rights Committee could be approving substantive rules with a lesser quorum than the quorum constitutionally mandated for enacting those rules. For a faction of the CC subverting the 2/3 quorum is not an issue as they conceive this supermajority quorum an imposition from the traditional political parties over the people’s sovereignty.
[1] This is in accordance with the constitutional reform that gave rise to the constituent process in Chile.
3 / Highlights of the Convention’s performance
The development of the Convention’s work has been marked by the following milestones, all of which will be addressed in upcoming bulletins of the Constitutional Monitor: