MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Maduro sorry for Chile not approving reformed Constitution

Photo: Reuters

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro explained Chile's proposed Constitution failed to get past Sunday's referendum because the process had been “mediatized.”

”There was a lack of firm, clear, credible leadership, with popular support, that would take the lead on the constitutional text and in the end, the Constitution of the dictatorship of (Augusto) Pinochet remained in force,“ Maduro explained after around 62% of the voters chose to drop the new text and hold on to the 1980 document from military dictatorship.

Maduro found that the proposal for constitutional change ”had its wings clipped by the old Congress“ that supported former President Sebastián Piñera and, therefore, an ”original, sovereign and plenipotentiary process“ never took place. ”They filled it with limitations and in the end what they convened was a constitutional convention (...), what a pain for the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, for the memory of the martyrs, the disappeared, the tortured,“ he said.

”Every Latin American and the Caribbean [citizen] who loves Chile, who loves the example of the martyred president Salvador Allende, everyone is going to be watching,“ Maduro went on as Chile's President Gabriel

Boric Font already announced a new attempt will be made to give the country a more progressive Magna Carta.

”It is truly painful what happened in Chile,“ the Venezuelan leader went on about ”this defeat of the historical project“ that promoted changes after the 2020 popular unrest.

Maduro also likened the Chilean process to a similar one undertaken in Venezuela between 2017 and 2019, which was eventually dropped. ”It was a true original, plenipotentiary and sovereign process, unlike the Chilean one which was not an original popular process”, he sentenced.