Now in Chile: anti-democratic and anti-national castrochavist constituent assemblies

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) In Latin America, 21st century’s Castrochavist Constituent Assemblies are the instrument used to end democracy and eradicate the nation in every country where these are imposed. Starting in Venezuela, the group birthed by Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro has, up to now, imposed its method of de-institutionalization in Bolivia and Ecuador, it is pending in Peru, and it is in the finalization stage in Chile. Castrochavism’s Constituent Assemblies are inflexible and repetitive as anti-democratic models, they violate human rights and wreck the nation, as is now happening in Chile.

It is baffling that anyone could call it a country’s Constitution a text that in its precepts, principles, and mandates violates human rights. Can this text, with legal standards that destroy national unity and set the basis for confrontation, destruction of the State, its sovereignty and nationhood, be approved and be imposed as the basic law of the land of a State?

Castrochavism Constituent Assemblies in Latin America were started by Hugo Chavez who swore “over an agonizing Constitution” as Venezuela’s President and who, immediately thereafter, put into motion the conformation of the 1999 Constituent Assembly to “steer the nation to new social, economic, and political welfare schemes” approving the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, that is the basis of the existing dictatorship plagued with humanitarian crises and the conversion of Venezuela into the narco-State that it is today.

In Bolivia, as the result of the coup d’état of October of 2003, the conformation of a Constituent Assembly was included in the “October’s Agenda”. The Law of Reform (of the Constitution, sic) 2631, dated 20 February of 2004, was counterfeited and as Evo Morales first act of his government, the Constituent Assembly was installed in 2006 that approved the counterfeited text in December of 2007 and was subsequently changed at an ordinary session of congress into Law 3941 of October of 2008. A referendum, muddled with police repression, political prisoners, exiled, and a notorious electoral fraud ended up with Evo Morales’ promulgation of 7 February of 2009, supplanting the Republic of Bolivia and creating the “Plurinational State, unitarian, social, and economically, the communitarian socialism…” the basis of the dictatorship and the narco-State that Bolivia is today.

With the slogan “let’s leave the past behind”, Rafael Correa created Ecuador’s Constituent Assembly from 2007 to 2008 that led to the drafting of the existing Constitution governing the country and proclaiming it to be a “Plurinational State”. This legal framework allowed Correa to hold power for over 10 years, riddled with corruption and impunity and enabled him to turn Ecuador into a narco-State, as proven in his prosecution and sentencing to eight years of incarceration, following the restoration of democracy in Ecuador. It is his pending incarceration that leads Correa to be permanently attempting to destabilize the country, such as the recently failed coup d’état.

Through the violence unleashed on Chile on the 18th of October of 2019, with the hike of the metro railway ticket costs as the apparent reason, they implemented a crisis that led to “a peace agreement and the need for a new Constitution” that included an accelerated constitutional reform that reinstated the conducting of a “plebiscite” that had been repealed before by President Lagos’ Constitution. The plebiscite of 25 October of 2020 approved the convening of a Constituent Assembly with only 50.95% of the votes of registered voters and the results were presented to the nation as a “72.8% of the population” or “the overwhelming majority of Chileans” when, in reality it was only 39.61% of Chilean voters. Afterwards they elected Constituent Assembly’s members and their proposed draft will be voted on this upcoming 4th of September.

In Chile, they are solely repeating the “Castrochavist constituents” details: 1. To promote and exacerbate social conflicts to turn them into governmental crisis that in-turn become State’s crises and end up being system’s crises, in other words conspiracy that corners governments (Venezuela, Chile) or topples them (Bolivia, Ecuador) in order to engender Constituent Assemblies; 2. To present the Constituent Assembly as a solution for change, control it, and propose -as part of the reforms- the destruction of the Republic (even just mentioning the word), the destruction of the Nation (with the imposition of plurinational) and the ending of democracy (along with the ensuing violations of human rights); 3. To impose the narrative that not approving the new Constitution fuels violence and that it must be approved to be able to live in peace, even if they impose it by force and with fraud.

The constitution project proposed to Chileans is a carbon copy of the worse fallacies of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador’s dictatorial constituents. Proof to corroborate this: 1. They violate the human right of “equality in dignity and rights” by giving more rights and power to groups they justify as indigenous and others; 2. They violate the human right to have “equality before the law” establishing tribunals by exception; 3. They violate the human right to “private property” with standards that hinder and make access and use more difficult; 4. They eliminate the human right to “social security”; 5. They make the Chilean nation disappear by fractioning it into “11 nations”, just as it is in Bolivia where, to destroy the “Bolivian nation” they have crafted the existence of 36 nations; 6. They supplant the concept of “pluri-culturalism” that is the foundation of any nation with a “plurinational” argument in order to promote confrontation, divide the State and its sovereignty; 7. They end democracy because by making the human right to equality disappear, they extinguish the concept of “universal Suffrage”. . . and more.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas