Santiago, Chile – Gaspar Dominguez briskly descended the steps of the majestic old Santiago Congress building in the harsh brightness of downtown Santiago’s winter sun. The 33-year-old doctor has spent the last year at the building – now a national monument – drafting Chile’s new constitution as part of a 154-person assembly.

He hugged and congratulated his colleagues who gathered outside; they had just finished drafting the text that could change the course of the country’s history and set precedents for equal rights around the world.

“In addition to social rights, housing rights and education rights, the constitution breaks new ground in terms of equality,” Dominguez told Al Jazeera.

It mentions equal participation quotas for women in public institutions and ensuring LGBTQ+ inclusion in political spaces.

“It is not enough to say that we are all equal, we must take positive action,” he added.

On Monday, the assembly will deliver the finalized draft text to President Gabriel Boric before it is made available to the public. Chileans will have two months to review the document and decide its fate in a mandatory referendum on September 4.

Dominguez, who is the assembly’s vice president, hailed the constitution as a democratic victory and is confident about the end result: “We’re very excited about it,” he said.

Calls for a new constitution arose in the wake of the 2019 Chilean Spring protests, when millions took to the streets demanding social reform despite brutal repression by state forces.

Thousands of people were injured and dozens were killed, fueling discontent and heightening distrust among political actors, especially the conservative Pinera government that held power at the time.

“Chained to Pinochet”

The country’s current constitution has been singled out as the root cause of staggering inequality and the high cost of living because it advocates unregulated privatization and promotes neoliberal policies.

Protesters deemed the document illegitimate because it was written in 1980 under the Pinochet dictatorship. In October 2020, an overwhelming 79% of Chileans voted to draft a new charter.

“We will always be chained to Pinochet as long as we are governed by his constitution,” said Erika Gonzalez, voluntarily distributing summarized and illustrated editions of the new text in downtown Santiago.

Gonzalez was an active member of the Socialist Party during Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship that ended in 1990. Under Pinochet’s military rule, Socialists were forced to flee the country or operate underground . Many were tortured and murdered.

“It’s time to put an end to Pinochet once and for all,” she said with tears in her eyes.

She believes that the new constitution can help transform Chile, notably by guaranteeing equal access to education. “A country that is educated is most important to me.”

But not everyone shares his enthusiasm for the text. “It’s just a book with silly illustrations,” said a passerby, flipping aggressively through the pages. Another shouted, “Reject it! One of them rushed out, muttering the word “Lies!”

Conservative reaction

The Chilean right strongly opposed the idea of ​​the new constitution and won only a minority of seats in the drafting assembly, whose members were chosen by election in May 2021.

Conservative voter Ruggero Cozzi, a 35-year-old lawyer, said he believed the assembly had failed to achieve its goal.

“I thought we would get a text that would give us unity and social cohesion, but we didn’t,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s been a precious, exhausting, but mostly disappointing year.”

Cozzi defended the free market system that the constitution is undoing and believed that privatization was the reason for Chile’s relatively strong infrastructure compared to other Latin American countries.

“Having the state organize everything will not bring about the necessary changes and did not end well for other Latin American countries,” he warned.

Cozzi is pushing for Chileans to reject the constitution in the September referendum – and the polls are tilting in his favor. The latest data from pollster Cadem reveals that 51% of Chileans would reject him.

However, the results of recent elections have been difficult to predict. In the 2021 presidential election, far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast claimed the lead in the primaries, only to be comfortably beaten by former left-wing student leader Gabriel Boric in the final vote.

It was the first time in the democratic history of Chile that a candidate who did not lead the primaries won the presidency.

Boric’s victory further affirmed Chile’s desire to break with its conservative past and embrace radical social change. In office since March, Boric supports the constitutional process and is mobilizing for the new charter to be adopted.

“A lot of aggression”

Claudia Heiss, head of political science at the Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Chile, similarly defends the text and the quality of its content.

“It would have been better if voters on the left and right had found more points on which to agree. The tone was not optimal and there was a lot of aggression,” she told Al Jazeera.

“But if you step back and look at the uprising and the decision to write a new constitution, it was generally a good process.”

If the new text is rejected, the current constitution will remain in place. However, Heiss believed there was no turning back regardless of the September result.

“We can be less dramatic about the virulence of the public debate that we know today. Whether approved or rejected, the 1980s constitution is no longer viable,” she said.

“Chile must move in a more social democratic direction, with more equality, with a better distribution, and that is inevitable.”