The national prize of Humanities and Social Sciences 2007, Manuel Antonio Garretón, referred to his definitions around the plebiscite where the proposal for a new Constitution will be approved or rejected on September 4, focusing his analysis on the scenarios that open up in the two possible results.
In an interview with La Tercera, the sociologist and academic at the University of Chile detailed the reasons that lead him to approve the text written by the Constitutional Convention, although he mentioned that “there will never be a text with which you agree 100%.
In that sense, the essayist believes that the main dilemma of the country with this decision is “to maintain a form of organization and life generated by a delegitimized Constitution, or to seek new horizons that change, in a democratic way, the principles in which the State has been based until now.”
“The absence of a legitimate Constitution, or the existence of a Constitution in absolute crisis of legitimacy, thus declared by all sectors. What the Approve option does, when winning, is to establish a new, legitimate Constitution,” he said.
The academic added that “if the Approval wins, the origin and content approved are entirely legitimate, and that opens a horizon for the country of new principles on which to base its coexistence and to which the actors of the political system must abide.”
On the other hand, Garretón pointed out that “the option of Rejection leaves standing, whatever is said, the current Constitution, which somehow provoked the crisis that culminated in the outbreak.”
The national prize for Humanities opined that “if the Rejection wins, what is going to be imposed, for example in Congress, is going to be the thesis of the right. And there’s no chance that the centrist position will have any leadership there.”
In addition, he warned that there is “a radical difference between the proposals to modify the world of Rejection and the proposals and agreements that are being taken around the Approval. In the former, it is a question of reforming the current Constitution, which is very serious, because it means that the Delegitimized Constitution is maintained.”
In that sense, the expert valued the agreement of the ruling parties to reform the constitutional proposal in the event that it wins the approval, Garretón said that “it helps to elucidate those aspects in which public opinion does not have clarity or where it needs precision. So if changes have to be made, they will be seen in politics, once the Approval wins.”
“The reforms proposed by the Rejection, on the other hand, would not go through a plebiscite, even if they say they will: it is not in any text. Rejection means rejecting a process and a text, and leaves the country adrift,” he said.
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