The Constitutional Convention () was the constituent body of the Republic of Chile tasked with drafting a new political constitution following the national plebiscite of October 2020, in which nearly 80 percent of voters had approved replacing the constitution inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and chose a directly elected convention as the mechanism to write it. Its creation was regulated by Law No. 21,200, published on 24 December 2019, which amended the 1980 constitution to establish the drafting process.
Composed of 155 members elected on 15–16 May 2021 under a system of gender parity and 17 seats reserved for Indigenous peoples, the Convention was, at the time, the first constitutional assembly in the world to be evenly split between men and women. It held its first session on 4 July 2021 and elected Mapuche academic Elisa Loncón as its first president, the first Indigenous person to lead a legislative body in Chilean history. President Sebastián Piñera had called on the body to draft and approve a new constitution within nine months, extendable once by three months, before submitting the text to a binding referendum. Following a change of leadership in January 2022 that saw dentist and academic María Elisa Quinteros elected president, the Convention completed its work and formally dissolved itself on 4 July 2022, delivering its finished proposal to President Gabriel Boric.
The resulting draft would have retained a market economy while expanding social, environmental, gender and Indigenous rights, converting the Senate into a chamber of regional representation, and establishing national health and education systems. Having faced sustained criticism for being too long, too left-leaning and too radical, the proposal was rejected by voters by a margin of about 62 to 38 percent in the mandatory 2022 Chilean constitutional referendum on 4 September 2022, with turnout of nearly 86 percent. The rejection led to a second, more limited constitutional process in 2023, involving an appointed Expert Commission and an elected Constitutional Council, whose own proposal was likewise rejected by voters in December 2023, leaving the 1980 constitution, as amended, in force.
Etymology According to Senator Jaime Quintana of the Party for Democracy, the term "Constitutional Convention" was coined during negotiation of the "Agreement for Social Peace and the New Constitution" on 14 November 2019, after Mario Desbordes, then president of National Renewal, asked that the drafting body not be called a "constituent assembly" so as to make the agreement easier for right-wing politicians to accept. Legal academics such as Claudia Heiss and Francisco Soto have argued that "Constitutional Convention" and "Constituent Assembly" are functionally equivalent, since both describe elected, collegiate bodies with the sole purpose of drafting a constitution. Lawyer Leonel Sánchez likewise found the two concepts essentially interchangeable, drawing on studies by the United Nations Development Programme and comparable bodies in other countries, while University of Talca academic Mario Herrera noted that, since members of both types of body are elected by popular vote for the sole purpose of drafting a constitution, no meaningful distinction exists between them.
Background and legal framework The Convention's creation followed the social unrest of October 2019, which prompted Congress to negotiate the "Agreement for Social Peace and the New Constitution." Under the resulting Chapter XV of the constitution, the body was required to draft and approve a text within nine months of its installation, extendable once by three months; if it failed to reach agreement or the deadline lapsed, the institution would simply dissolve, leaving the 1980 constitution unchanged. Every decision, including the Convention's own rules of procedure, required a two-thirds supermajority of the 155 members, meaning that any provision failing to secure that threshold would be dropped from the draft. The constitution also required the proposed text to respect Chile's democratic and republican form of government, existing judicial rulings, and international treaties ratified by Chile. Disputes over the Convention's own procedural rules were to be resolved by five Supreme Court justices selected by lot; the court issued implementing rules for this mechanism on 22 March 2021.
Elections and composition
The election of the 155 members was originally expected in late 2020 but was postponed twice by the government because of the COVID-19 pandemic, finally taking place over two days, 15 and 16 May 2021, alongside mayoral, council and regional-governor elections. More than six million people voted, with roughly 60 percent of seats going to independents or candidates linked to left-wing parties and social movements, while support for outgoing President Piñera's coalition fell to about 24 percent. On 15 June 2021 the Election Certification Tribunal proclaimed the 155 elected members after dismissing twelve challenges to individual results.
The electoral pact with the most seats was "Vamos por Chile," the coalition backing the Piñera government, with 37 seats, though the Independent Democratic Union was the single party with the most seats (17). Independents nonetheless denied any bloc a majority: candidates from the anti-establishment List of the People and the Non-Neutral Independents pact together won 37 seats, and a further 12 independents ran outside any pact, for a combined 49 seats. The second-largest pact was the left-wing "Apruebo Dignidad" coalition, with 28 seats, ahead of the center-left "Lista del Apruebo" with 25.
Seventeen seats were reserved for Indigenous peoples and elected under a separate, party-independent regime: seven for the Mapuche, two for the Aymara, and one each for the Kawésqar, Rapa Nui, Yaghan, Quechua, Atacameño, Diaguita, Colla and Chango peoples.
The Convention was composed of 78 men and 77 women, making it, at the time of its installation, the first gender-balanced constituent assembly in the world. Members averaged 44.5 years of age, with a 60-year gap between the oldest delegate, 81-year-old Jorge Arancibia, and the youngest, 21-year-old Valentina Miranda. By profession, 59 members were lawyers and seven were law students, 20 were teachers, nine were engineers and five were journalists; six had previously served in the National Congress of Chile and nine had previously held government positions. Eight members were openly part of the LGBT community and, on 28 June 2021, formed the "Constituent Dissident Network" to coordinate work on sexual-diversity issues. One elected member, Rodrigo Rojas Vade, resigned in March 2022 after admitting he had falsely claimed to have cancer, leaving the Convention with 154 sitting members for the remainder of its term.
Salaries were set at 50 UTM per month for each member, roughly $2.6 million pesos (about $3,500) when the Convention began sitting. The government's initial 2021 budget for the Convention was around 6.7 billion pesos, covering members' salaries, staff and advisers, and building costs; the amount was later increased to about 8.8 billion pesos to cover installation and early operating costs, with roughly 38 percent of that budget spent by the end of July 2021. A later media accounting estimated the combined cost of the entry and exit plebiscites, the Convention's installation and operation, and public outreach on the draft at roughly 68 billion pesos.
Functioning
The Convention was required to hold its installation session within 15 days of the publication of the presidential decree convening it, and, at that session, to elect a president and vice-president by absolute majority. Approval of its voting regulations and rules of procedure required a two-thirds quorum.
Seat In September 2020 the government proposed housing the Convention in the palace of the former National Congress in downtown Santiago, with the Pereira Palace as a support building for advisers and administrative staff, though some legislators objected that the former Congress building was still needed for other legislative work. On 11 January 2021, President Piñera confirmed the Pereira Palace as the Convention's working headquarters, with 15 offices, 102 workstations and 11 meeting rooms, while the former Congress building would host plenary sessions and certain committees. The hemicycle of the former Chamber of Deputies was remodeled with continuous, semicircular desks modeled on the Spanish Congress of Deputies to seat all 155 members, and the building was formally handed over to the Convention on 30 June 2021.
Installation session
The installation session was convened for 4 July 2021 in the courtyards of the former National Congress building, chosen to coincide with the 210th anniversary of Chile's first National Congress. The ceremony had to be suspended for several hours before noon after protests by Indigenous and List of the People delegates demanding the withdrawal of security forces, amid clashes between police and demonstrators outside the venue. Once proceedings resumed, Election Certification Tribunal secretary Carmen Gloria Valladares swore in the 155 members before overseeing the election of the Convention's first president.
The election of president proceeded over two rounds. In the first round: Elisa Loncón (Independent, Mapuche) – 58 Harry Jürgensen (Vamos Chile) – 36 Isabel Godoy (Independent, Qulla) – 35 Patricia Politzer (Independent) – 20
In the second round, Loncón was elected with 96 votes, against 33 for Jürgensen, 18 for Politzer and 5 for Godoy, with 3 blank votes. Jaime Bassa, an independent constitutional-law academic close to Social Convergence, was elected vice-president in a third round of voting. Shortly after taking office, Loncón and Bassa said they intended to press for amnesty for so-called "prisoners of the revolt" and of the Mapuche conflict.
The Convention's early sessions were disrupted by logistical failures: the first scheduled working session, on 5 July, was suspended because the former Congress building lacked enough properly equipped rooms to seat all 155 members within pandemic capacity limits, and rooms that had been prepared were not connected for remote participation. The Convention's leadership blamed the national government, particularly the Ministry of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, for the failure to provide adequate facilities, and several left-wing blocs called for the resignation of Minister Juan José Ossa and executive secretary Francisco Encina. Chilean public universities, led by the University of Chile, offered temporary facilities, and the Committee on Rules of Procedure met at the university's main campus from 9 August 2021. Executive secretary Francisco Encina resigned on 7 July 2021 over the unresolved infrastructure problems and was succeeded in turn by Catalina Parot and, from August 2021, by Matías Cox.
Decentralized sessions Several thematic committees held hearings outside Santiago as a gesture toward regional inclusion. The Committee on Decentralization held public hearings in Arica, San Carlos, Ovalle and Ancud between 17 and 20 August 2021, and the full plenary met twice in Concepción on 23 and 26 November 2021 during a "constituent week" in the Biobío Region. The Committee on Human Rights also held a session at a women's prison in San Joaquín on 25 August 2021.
Alleged smear campaign