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Chileans in the country's streets marked a victory on Friday as the government agreed to hold a referendum on replacing the dictatorship-era constitution. (Photo: Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images)
'A Victory for the Whole Country': Chile to Hold Referendum on Rewriting Constitution
"We are here thanks to many Chileans that have risked their lives to make Chile a fairer country."
Nov 14, 2019
The Chilean government on Friday officially began the processs of writing a new constitution for the country by approving a popular referendum, a bow to the demands of the nationwide protest movement that began in Santiago on October 15.
The referendum will ask the country to weigh in on whether the old constitution, a relic of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, should be replaced. Voters will also have the opportunity to determine how the new document is drafted.
"This is a victory for the whole country," Senate president Jamie Quintana, a frequent critic of Chilean President Sebastien Pinera, said in a press conference early Friday. "We offer for the first time a constitution that is 100% democratic."
Quintana called the proposal the beginning of a "building of a true social contract" and hoped that the process would mark the end of violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces that have seen at least 20 people dead.
\u201cHoy es un d\u00eda hist\u00f3rico para Chile. Desde hace tres d\u00e9cadas se ha intentado muchas veces cambiar la constituci\u00f3n. Hoy la ciudadan\u00eda lo ha hecho posible. Esta es una victoria de todo el pa\u00eds.\u201d— Jaime Quintana (@Jaime Quintana) 1573798234
Friday's announcement marks a formalization of a government declaration Monday that the constitution would be rewritten, though no timeline was given then.
In comments to Bloomberg, lawmaker Gabriel Boric of the left-leaning Frente Amplio praised the protest movement and held up the constitution announcement as a success for the people of Chile.
"We are here thanks to many Chileans that have risked their lives to make Chile a fairer country," said Boric. "Political forces have reached agreements that seemed impossible just a few days ago."
As Common Dreams reported, protests began in October, sparked by a youth movement rejecting an increase in subway fares in the capital Santiago. The unrest has continued in the face of brutal state oppression as Chileans have stood fast for political change.
On Friday, they got their wish.
"Now is the time to respond to citizens and do everything possible to build a better, fairer Chile," said center-left Partido Por la Democracia leader Heraldo Munoz. "This fundamental charter needs to represent all of us."
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The Chilean government on Friday officially began the processs of writing a new constitution for the country by approving a popular referendum, a bow to the demands of the nationwide protest movement that began in Santiago on October 15.
The referendum will ask the country to weigh in on whether the old constitution, a relic of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, should be replaced. Voters will also have the opportunity to determine how the new document is drafted.
"This is a victory for the whole country," Senate president Jamie Quintana, a frequent critic of Chilean President Sebastien Pinera, said in a press conference early Friday. "We offer for the first time a constitution that is 100% democratic."
Quintana called the proposal the beginning of a "building of a true social contract" and hoped that the process would mark the end of violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces that have seen at least 20 people dead.
\u201cHoy es un d\u00eda hist\u00f3rico para Chile. Desde hace tres d\u00e9cadas se ha intentado muchas veces cambiar la constituci\u00f3n. Hoy la ciudadan\u00eda lo ha hecho posible. Esta es una victoria de todo el pa\u00eds.\u201d— Jaime Quintana (@Jaime Quintana) 1573798234
Friday's announcement marks a formalization of a government declaration Monday that the constitution would be rewritten, though no timeline was given then.
In comments to Bloomberg, lawmaker Gabriel Boric of the left-leaning Frente Amplio praised the protest movement and held up the constitution announcement as a success for the people of Chile.
"We are here thanks to many Chileans that have risked their lives to make Chile a fairer country," said Boric. "Political forces have reached agreements that seemed impossible just a few days ago."
As Common Dreams reported, protests began in October, sparked by a youth movement rejecting an increase in subway fares in the capital Santiago. The unrest has continued in the face of brutal state oppression as Chileans have stood fast for political change.
On Friday, they got their wish.
"Now is the time to respond to citizens and do everything possible to build a better, fairer Chile," said center-left Partido Por la Democracia leader Heraldo Munoz. "This fundamental charter needs to represent all of us."
The Chilean government on Friday officially began the processs of writing a new constitution for the country by approving a popular referendum, a bow to the demands of the nationwide protest movement that began in Santiago on October 15.
The referendum will ask the country to weigh in on whether the old constitution, a relic of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, should be replaced. Voters will also have the opportunity to determine how the new document is drafted.
"This is a victory for the whole country," Senate president Jamie Quintana, a frequent critic of Chilean President Sebastien Pinera, said in a press conference early Friday. "We offer for the first time a constitution that is 100% democratic."
Quintana called the proposal the beginning of a "building of a true social contract" and hoped that the process would mark the end of violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces that have seen at least 20 people dead.
\u201cHoy es un d\u00eda hist\u00f3rico para Chile. Desde hace tres d\u00e9cadas se ha intentado muchas veces cambiar la constituci\u00f3n. Hoy la ciudadan\u00eda lo ha hecho posible. Esta es una victoria de todo el pa\u00eds.\u201d— Jaime Quintana (@Jaime Quintana) 1573798234
Friday's announcement marks a formalization of a government declaration Monday that the constitution would be rewritten, though no timeline was given then.
In comments to Bloomberg, lawmaker Gabriel Boric of the left-leaning Frente Amplio praised the protest movement and held up the constitution announcement as a success for the people of Chile.
"We are here thanks to many Chileans that have risked their lives to make Chile a fairer country," said Boric. "Political forces have reached agreements that seemed impossible just a few days ago."
As Common Dreams reported, protests began in October, sparked by a youth movement rejecting an increase in subway fares in the capital Santiago. The unrest has continued in the face of brutal state oppression as Chileans have stood fast for political change.
On Friday, they got their wish.
"Now is the time to respond to citizens and do everything possible to build a better, fairer Chile," said center-left Partido Por la Democracia leader Heraldo Munoz. "This fundamental charter needs to represent all of us."
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LATEST NEWS
'Evidence of Genocidal Intent': Israeli General Calls for Killing 50 Palestinians for Every Oct. 7 Victim
Aharon Haliva, the former head of military intelligence in Israel, said in his vengeful remarks that it "doesn't matter now if they are children."
Aug 18, 2025
Those who listened to the 22-minute speech given by a South African attorney as part of the country's genocide case against Israel at the United Nations' top court in January 2024 have long been well aware that Israeli officials have openly made genocidal statements about their military assault on Gaza—but a recording broadcast by an Israeli news channel on Sunday revealed what The Guardian called an "unusually direct description of collective punishment of civilians" by a high-level general.
Aharon Haliva, the general who led Israel's military intelligence operations on October 7, 2023 when Hamas led an attack on the country, was heard in a recording broadcast by Channel 12 that "for everything that happened on October 7, for every person on October 7, 50 Palestinians must die."
"The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations," said Haliva in comments that were made "in recent months," according to Channel 12. "It doesn't matter now if they are children."
More than 62,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel's airstrikes and ground assault on Gaza since October 7, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, with more than 250 people having died of malnutrition due to Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid. The official death toll figures put out by officials in Gaza is believed by many to be a severe undercount.
The Israel Defense Forces' own data recently showed that only about 20,000 militants are among those who have been killed by Israeli forces—even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and both Republican and Democratic leaders in the United States, the top international funder of the IDF, continue to insist that the military is targeting Hamas.
Haliva, who stepped down from leading military intelligence in April 2024, added in his comments that Palestinians "need a Nakba every now and then to feel the price"—a reference to the forced displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, the killing of about 15,000 people, and the destruction of more than 500 Palestinian towns when the state of Israel was created in 1948.
Notably, The Guardian reported that Haliva is "widely seen as a centrist critic of the current government and its far-right ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir," whose genocidal statements about Gaza and the West Bank have been widely reported.
When arguing South Africa's genocide case at the International Court of Justice in January 2024, attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi catalogued a number of statements made by Netanyahu, the IDF, and his top Israeli ministers, including:
- A call from Netanyahu for Israelis to "remember what Amalek has done to you," a reference to God's command that the Israelites massacre their ancient enemy, the Amalekites, in the Old Testament;
- A demand from Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi that the IDF "burn Gaza" to the ground, and a statement from him that "the people of Gaza cannot be described as animals because animals are better than humans"; and
- A chant made by Israeli soldiers, who had been told early in the war to "release all restraints" as they bombarded Gaza, that there are "no uninvolved civilians" in the enclave.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which said last month that it had determined Netanyahu's government is committing genocide in Gaza, said Haliva's remarks "are part of a long line of official statements that expose a deliberate policy of genocide."
"For 22 months, Israel has pursued a policy of systematically destroying Palestinian life in Gaza," said B'Tselem. "This is genocide. It is happening now. It must be stopped."
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor added that Haliva openly admitted "what Israel tries to deny: genocide is not a byproduct of war but the goal."
Haliva's remark about the necessity of repeating the Nakba in Gaza "reveals a clear intention: The bloodshed is not meant to stop, but to be repeated."
Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Haliva's statement "is not just evidence of genocidal rhetoric, it is a blueprint for genocidal action" that must push the US government to end its support for Israel.
"The Trump administration and the international community can no longer turn a blind eye," said Awad. "President [Donald] Trump and Congress cannot continue to claim they do not know or deny what the entire world is seeing every hour of every day. The United States must immediately halt all military aid and support to Israel and demand accountability for war crimes committed in Gaza. Silence is complicity."
Trump Vow to 'Get Rid of Mail-In Ballots' for 2026 Blasted as 'Unconstitutional'
Any such effort, said one democracy watchdog, "would violate the Constitution and is a major step to prevent free and fair elections."
Aug 18, 2025
In his latest full-frontal assault on democratic access and voting rights, President Donald Trump early Monday said he will lead an effort to ban both mail-in ballots and voting machines for next year's mid-term elections—a vow met with immediate rebuke from progressive critics.
"I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election," Trump wrote in a social media post infested with lies and falsehoods.
Trump falsely claimed that no other country in the world uses mail-in voting—a blatant lie, according to International IDEA, which monitors democratic trends worldwide, at least 34 nations allow for in-country postal voting of some kind. The group notes that over 100 countries allow out-of-country postal voting for citizens living or stationed overseas during an election.
Trump has repeated his false claim—over and over again—that he won the 2020 election, which he actually lost, in part due to fraud related to mail-in ballots, though the lie has been debunked ad nauseam. He also fails to note that mail-in ballots were very much in use nationwide in 2024, with an estimated 30% of voters casting a mail-in ballot as opposed to in-person during the election in which Trump returned to the White House and Republicans took back the US Senate and retained the US House of Representatives.
Monday's rant by Trump came just days after his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Trump claimed commented personally on the 2020 election and mail-in ballots. In a Friday night interview with Fox News, Trump claimed "one of the most interesting" things Putin said during their talks about ending the war in Ukraine was about mail-in voting in the United States and how Trump would have won the election were it not for voter fraud, echoing Trump's own disproven claims.
Trump: Vladimir Putin said your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting… he talked about 2020 and he said you won that election by so much.. it was a rigged election. pic.twitter.com/m8v0tXuiDQ
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 16, 2025
Trump said Monday he would sign an executive order on election processes, suggesting that it would forbid mail-in ballots as well as the automatic tabulation machines used in states nationwide. He also said that states, which are in charge of administering their elections at the local level, "must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do."
Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket, which tracks voting rights and issues related to ballot access, said any executive order by Trump to end mail-in voting or forbid provenly safe and accurate voting machines ahead of the midterms would be "unconstitutional and illegal."
Such an effort, said Elias, "would violate the Constitution and is a major step to prevent free and fair elections."
Residents Revolt as 'Free DC' Protests Target Trump's National Guard Deployment
"We've got the FBI patrolling the streets." said one protester. "We've got National Guard set up as a show of force. What's scarier is if we allow this."
Aug 17, 2025
Residents of Washington, DC over the weekend demonstrated against US President Donald Trump's deployment of the National Guard in their city.
As reported by NBC Washington, demonstrators gathered on Saturday at DuPont Circle and then marched to the White House to direct their anger at Trump for sending the National Guard to Washington DC, and for his efforts to take over the Metropolitan Police Department.
In an interview with NBC Washington, one protester said that it was important for the administration to see that residents weren't intimidated by the presence of military personnel roaming their streets.
"I know a lot of people are scared," the protester said. "We've got the FBI patrolling the streets. We've got National Guard set up as a show of force. What's scarier is if we allow this."
Saturday protests against the presence of the National Guard are expected to be a weekly occurrence, organizers told NBC Washington.
Hours after the march to the White House, other demonstrators began to gather at Union Station to protest the presence of the National Guard units there. Audio obtained by freelance journalist Andrew Leyden reveals that the National Guard decided to move their forces out of the area in reaction to what dispatchers called "growing demonstrations."
Even residents who didn't take part in formal demonstrations over the weekend managed to express their displeasure with the National Guard patrolling the city. According to The Washington Post, locals who spent a night on the town in the U Street neighborhood on Friday night made their unhappiness with law enforcement in the city very well known.
"At the sight of local and federal law enforcement throughout the night, people pooled on the sidewalk—watching, filming, booing," wrote the Post. "Such interactions played out again and again as the night drew on. Onlookers heckled the police as they did their job and applauded as officers left."
Trump last week ordered the National Guard into Washington, DC and tried to take control the Metropolitan Police, purportedly in order to reduce crime in the city. Statistics released earlier this year, however, showed a significant drop in crime in the nation's capital.
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