The National Renewal (RN) bloc presented a bill that seeks to give the Constitutional Court the power to exercise constitutional control over the rules of procedure of the Convention, the Chamber of Deputies, and the Senate.
According to the head of the bloc, Leopoldo Perez, and Deputy Gonzalo Fuenzalida, the initiative is based on “overcoming an omission that was justified for many years in parliamentary autonomy, which by the way cannot mean a patent of corsican for the Parliament and the Convention.”
“The rule of control of the procedure that was incorporated into the Constitution is ambiguous and does not allow the individual exercise of actions when the subjective rights of the constituent conventions are violated,” they said.
“At least the discussion should be raised, because, for example, if a norm such as that of denialism prospers, pluralism and democratic dialogue are openly violated,” they added.
According to Deputy Perez, “we have seen a series of arbitrariness and discrimination, which not only affect the right of the conventional to participate in the debate, but also those who elected them, who will not be able to be represented according to what they chose with their vote.”
“Parliamentary regulations and those of the Convention cannot be excluded from the constitutional framework (…) Parliaments and the Convention are not spaces excluded from the Constitution, where the loudest shouts prevails. We cannot allow that. We must overcome this structural flaw,” concluded Deputy Fuenzalida.
Criticism from the Convention
The idea of RN provoked immediate reactions. For the constituent RD, María José Oyarzún, the proposal is “unusual”. “It is a political and legal mistake and horror. The Constituent Power cannot be submitted to the Constituted Power. It is an autonomous Power,” he stressed on his Twitter account.
Meanwhile, constitutional lawyer Christian Viera agreed that the idea is “unusual.” “The rules of the agreement may be changed by reform of the Political Constitution of the Republic; In this case, it is an ineffective power because there is a possibility of a claim before the Supreme Court,” he explained.
On the right, meanwhile, there are different views. The conventional Christian Monckeberg (RN) immediately disassociated himself, noting that “I value good intentions, but Congress in its own and the Convention in its own.”
“I do not believe that it is necessary to continue to introduce bills that regulate or re-regulate or deregulate what is now the Convention. The rules are already set and on that framework we have to work, I do not think it is necessary to put more hairs (…) Obviously, on many rules that have been adopted we do not agree, but I believe that the regulations that relate to the Convention are left to the Convention,” he said.
“Never can a regulatory rule violate constitutional guarantees”
For her part, the constituent of Vamos por Chile, Marcela Cubillos, was consulted about the bill presented by the RN bloc and pointed out that beyond this particular bill “never a regulatory norm can violate constitutional guarantees.”
“What we have seen what has been approved in the Ethics Commission, are clearly not rules that can be applied to anyone, because freedom of expression is violated, freedom to express opinion without prior censorship is violated, and also in some respects freedom of work or equality before the justice system is violated,” added the conventional one.
“When we make a regulation, it has to be done with respect for the rules of the Constitution that are still valid today,” the former education minister continued.
The former minister insisted that “today there is a Constitution that guarantees freedom of expression, therefore the Convention making use of a supposed autonomy can not override constitutional guarantees. Regardless of whether or not this reform bill presented by this group of deputies succeeds or fails, a convention regulation could never violate constitutional guarantees” or else one way to challenge convention decisions is through protection appeals to the Supreme Court.
“A majority in the Ethics Commission cannot restrict or eliminate your freedom to express yourself without prior censorship as they intend to do in these rules of this truly Taliban regulation of the Ethics Commission,” Cubillos said.
