CHILE: PRESIDENT RICARDO LAGOS SAYS REFORM OF PINOCHET-ERA CONSTITUTION COMPLETE.
A plenary session of Chile's Congress overwhelmingly passed a set of constitutional reforms on Aug. 16, removing both the signature of former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and many provisions that he put into the 1980 Constitution. President Ricardo Lagos praised the reforms as the completion of a 15-year transition to democracy, although he wants Congress to alter the binomial system of electing representatives, which grants extensive powers to opposition parties and makes it more difficult for small minority parties to gain office. Although the system has been taken out of the Constitution, it remains part of electoral law. On the day of the vote for reforming the Constitution, a group of about 50 protestors invaded Congress calling for the complete elimination of the binomial system.
Lagos' signature replaces Pinochet's
The Lagos government was able to make several reforms last year when the rightist parties opened the way for constitutional changes like allowing the president to remove military commanders in chief and eliminating senator-for-life seats (see NotiSur, 2004-10-22). The July and August decisions in Congress made more than 50 reforms to Pinochet's 1980 Constitution.
Among the chief reforms were the reduction of the president's term from six to four years, the elimination of senators-for-life, and the removal of "designated" or "institutional" senators who did not have to face popular votes. The Senate will be smaller once the reforms are put into place, shrinking from 48 to 38 seats.
The 1980 Constitution gave extra powers to military commanders, fixing their influence above that of the president and the voters. Among the institutional senators were representatives from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Carabineros, or militarized federal police, creating a "military bench" within the Congress. Lagos and his successors may now remove the commanders-in-chief of those military branches, a power presidents could not exercise prior to the reforms.
Ex-presidents enjoyed lifetime seats, partly a tactic by Pinochet to retain his hold on power and have immunity for his crimes against Chilean political activists. Pinochet resigned his Senate seat, however, after Chile's top court found him mentally unfit to stand trial (see NotiSur, 2002-07-12).
Senator-for-life and former President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994-2000) is set to leave the Senate in 2006, along with the nine other designated senators. Frei is the only...
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