This Friday and Saturday, the conventional ones had their last opportunity to address the plenary session. The purpose was supposed to be to discuss the proposal of the Harmonization Committee which is due to be voted on next week. The six minutes that each one of us had, however, we all used for something to say goodbye to the constituent process and give a last look at what it was for each one of us. There was a lot to say, but they had to fit in six minutes. This was what I read:
“So far, the presentations heard have opted for one of the following evaluations of the Convention: a magnificent event, a failure or missed opportunity, an unfinished process. I lean towards the latter.
It could hardly be otherwise, since we are shaping a political agreement that allows us to face an ongoing cultural change. We hardly see it clearly, because we are inserted in it. We are experiencing it: a mega innovation in the field of communications, which has profoundly transformed our political relations; the irruption of women demanding their place in public decision-making, one of the greatest cultural revolutions in human history; a global warming that threatens planetary subsistence in a less hypothetical way than an atomic bomb. All phenomena of unprecedented consequences. It is not just a national challenge, but a global one. This is what explains the interest we have aroused in political scientists from very different latitudes.
We can evaluate with more or less enthusiasm the text that we are about to sanction, but it is undeniable that it faces these new realities. It does so in an imperfect, founding, embryonic way. There are multiple issues that we are looking at here for the first time and that will require the contribution and knowledge of many others to finish curdling in a well-tuned institutionality: parity, ecological coexistence, regionalization, direct democracy, recognition and the protection of diversities, plurinationality, the social state of law. The engine room that sought legitimacy here will surely need adjustments when shooting.
What is clear to me is that the Pinochet constitution, which became the constitution of the transition, is anachronistic and incapable of facing these new realities to generate social peace. There are no reforms capable of updating it, because it starts from an outdated conception. The proposed text, on the other hand, sets a new starting point. If it was written in stone, I would reject it. In these moments of change and uncertainty, any opinion deaf to the corrections that a groping demands of us seems absurd and obstinate. I take it for granted that, if this text is approved, from the next day it will suffer proposals for improvements, amendments agreed upon by the different political forces that will broaden their network of support and incorporate those views that here, due to the characteristics and the moment in which gave the discussion, we did not know how to give enough space.
The great force that moved this Convention is called “inclusion”: the elderly, children, the disabled, neurodivergents, diversities, provincials, women, indigenous… All of them bidding for a space of visibility, consideration and respect.
It is true, many of those who came demanding their place, denied it to those who had always had it. The judging right went to the dock of the accused. The historically marginalized, marginalized her and forced her to experience that same fury, daughter of exclusion. In this way, those who came with the will to participate -a part of the right, because the other came to boycott- “detonated”. Here we call “detonated” those who lose their temper and who opt for the deaf cry instead of the attentive word, for the heroic and stunning speech, instead of putting their best efforts, without ever giving up, to combat intolerance. There are “detonated” in all sectors: they are those who, forgetting all sense of humor, unable to understand the weaknesses of others and their infinite capacity to err, reject and insult them, convinced of their own superiority and infallibility.
Democracy is a permanent and fragile construction, always perfectible and tirelessly threatened. And if we are facing any challenge now, it is its difficult expansion. Deciding between more and diverse is exponentially more complex than deciding between few and similar.
In this Convention, the vociferous from the different sectors conquered the interest of the media and networks, disgusting many who hoped to see the common good placed at the center instead of their own voices. But the rules did not win. The full and the obligation to conquer the 2/3 to impose each of them, knew how to frustrate their claims. The maximalist temptations that aspired to define in detail the way in which the general guidelines that we agreed on should be specified did not prevail. They were mostly given over to the law and public policies. No rule marginalized the participation of private parties in the provision of social rights.
I admired, during this time, the dedication with which all of us here dedicated ourselves to this task. I saw a transverse and moving delivery. I got bored at times, but I never lost the conviction that I was participating in an extraordinary event”.
