Chilean Constitution of 1980

This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: Rejection of the proposed constitution in 2022 and 2023. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (December 2023)

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The Political Constitution of the Republic of Chile of 1980 (Spanish: Constitución Política de la República de Chile) is the fundamental law in force in Chile. It was approved and promulgated under the military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet, being ratified by the Chilean citizenry through a referendum on September 11, 1980, although being held under restrictions and without electoral registers. While 69% of the population was reported to have voted yes, the vote was questioned by hundreds of denunciations of irregularities and fraud.^[1] The constitutional text took effect, in a transitory regime, on March 11, 1981, and then entered into full force on March 11, 1990, with the return to electoral democracy. It was amended for the first time in 1989 (through a referendum), and afterward in 1991, 1994, 1997, each year from 1999 to 2001, 2003, each year from 2007 to 2015, and each year from 2017 to 2021, with the last three amendments concerning the constituent process of 2020–2022. In September 2005, under Ricardo Lagos's presidency, a large amendment of the Constitution was approved by parliamentarians, removing from the text some of the less democratic dispositions coming from Pinochet's regime, such as senators-for-life and appointed senators, as well as the armed forces' warranty of the democratic regime.^[2]

On November 15, 2019, following a series of popular protests in October 2019, a political agreement between parties with parliamentary representation called for a national referendum on the proposal of writing a new Constitution and on the mechanism to draft it.^[3] A plebiscite held on October 25, 2020, approved drafting a new fundamental charter, as well as choosing by popular vote delegates to a Constitutional Convention which was to fulfill this objective. The members of the convention were elected in May, 2021,^[4] and first convened on July 4, 2021.^[5] However, on September 4, 2022, voters rejected the new constitution in the constitutional referendum.^[6]