Municipal consultation and citizen vote

Daisy Margarit S
Academic at the Institute of Advanced Studies IDEA USACH.
Millennium Nucleus Mobilities and Territories MOVYT

Two years after the last presidential elections, Chile experienced an unprecedented citizen-led process: the Municipal Consultation, which involved more than 200 municipalities. Its main objective was to ask citizens about constitutional reform. This consultative process also allowed local governments to identify the main needs of their residents regarding institutional, social, regional, and local issues.

The unprecedented nature of this process is recognizable: firstly, because for the first time it is agreed at the local level to carry out a citizen consultation of this kind, joining efforts from the institutional, local governments, universities, grassroots organizations, the civic community, and secondly because part of the voting was through a modality of electronic and in-person voting.

Who could vote? As in all elections, the voter registry for this referendum included all citizens aged 18 and over, with the possibility of extending the age range to include those between 14 and 18, depending on the decision of each municipality. Unfortunately, not all local governments did this. This demand from civil society was important, given that part of the social unrest has been driven from its inception by high school students.

However, a significant issue was that the Electoral Service closed the electoral register in December 2017. Because it was outdated, a group of people were unable to vote: all foreign nationals who met the residency requirements in Chile but were denied this right due to the outdated register. Therefore, it is worth asking, at this moment when we are redefining a new social framework for our country, who currently holds full political rights in Chile? The constitution that still governs us, drafted under a dictatorship, shows that the full exercise of these rights is relegated to citizenship based on nationality.

The right to have rights—not only social and economic, but also full political rights—includes the right of foreign residents in the country to vote on issues that affect daily life and transcend individual decisions. This is part of exercising citizenship. So why not recognize these rights for those who live in our neighborhoods, use public transportation, revitalize community spaces, have their children in community schools, pay taxes and receive medical care in clinics, work and contribute to the country's development, and above all, are part of a new neighborhood community, regardless of where they were born? We clearly believe that their right to express their opinions and participate in decision-making through the political instrument of voting must be guaranteed, both regarding the issues and decisions the municipality makes concerning their environment, and also, in the long term, regarding what we hope to build as a country.

People who have migrated and now reside in the neighborhoods of Chile's municipalities contribute in diverse ways every day. We must consider immigration not only as a source of labor but also from the perspective of their respective cultural frameworks, recognizing their contributions to the diverse ways in which citizenship is built. There is symbolic value in the migrant resident, not only in the material aspects of their production as economic agents, but also in the process of shaping social life within neighborhood communities and society as a whole.

We are at a historic juncture that requires rethinking our social relationships, and this means including everyone who lives in the same territory. The constitutional process we are initiating cannot be seen as a starting point, but rather as a goal that entails greater democratization of society. Changing the restrictive boundaries of citizenship is an important task, especially considering those who were not born in the country but who, in fact, participate in the social, cultural, economic, and political construction of our society.

La Tercera – 19-12-2019

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