Chile would postpone constituent Elections to May

President Sebastián Piñera proposed on Sunday to postpone the election of the drafters of Chile’s new Constitution until mid-May, arguing for health reasons at a time when the country is experiencing its worst days since the arrival of the coronavirus.

The president said that he will send his proposal to Congress on Monday so that the elections scheduled for April 10 and 11 in Chile are held until May 15 and 16.

“This has been a very difficult decision but we must take it, and we have the full conviction that it is the best decision for Chile and the Chileans,” said Piñera from La Moneda, citing two reasons for this: “to protect the health and life of all ”and“ protect the health of our democracy”.

The occupation of beds in intensive care units is around 95% and daily infections average 7,400 cases, unprecedented figures in the South American country.

“There is no doubt that the current situation of the pandemic and the risk of contagion inhibit many from going to vote, which reduces the participation and legitimacy of the electoral process of constituents, mayors, councilors and governors,” added the president.

He indicated that the decision was made after listening to the COVID 19 Expert Council, the Ministry of Health and the Medical Council, which unanimously recommended suspending the elections.

The Ministry of Health reported on Sunday more than 7,300 new infected, a figure higher than the 6,938 registered last June, and specified that, of the 3,579 beds of enabled intensive care units, more than 2,500 are occupied by patients with COVID- 19.

In just under a thousand more there are patients with other pathologies, and there are only 165 available. It is the fourth consecutive day that the number of infections exceeds 7,000 cases.

Another fact that reflects the serious Chilean health situation was registered on Sunday at the Carlos van Buren hospital, in the neighboring port of Valparaíso, which reported that, due to the increase in patients received over the weekend, another sector of the campus had to be enabled to place the corpses awaiting burial.

The Piñera government resisted until the weekend to propose the postponement of the simultaneous elections of mayors, councilors, governors and the 155 people who will draw up the new Constitution, but was forced to change its opinion due to the persistence of the serious sanitary indices and as the voices of experts who advocated the suspension increased.

Initially, the majority of government and opposition politicians were also opposed to postponing the elections.

An overwhelming majority of Chileans (78%) decided in the historic plebiscite of October 25 to leave behind the Magna Carta of 1980, inherited from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

Previously, in a desperate attempt to stop the contagion and maintain the elections, the government imposed a quarantine in 198 of the 346 communes of the country, and in another 89 it imposed a lockdown on Saturdays and Sundays. Sixteen million of the 19 million Chileans are under total confinement.

However, the permits granted by the authorities for the movement of essential company personnel and other individuals in specific cases allow a couple of million people to continue to mobilize. Public transport kept running.

The president of the Medical College of Chile, Izquia Sichez, said on Friday that the medical community is afraid of not being able to treat or hospitalize those who need it.

For its part, the advisory committee of the Ministry of Health warned the same day that, unanimously, “we consider that carrying out the election in this context may aggravate the situation”, which it described as “critical.”

Chile has vaccinated more than 6.4 million people in less than two months, more than half of them with the second doses, and most of the older adults, but it is still too early for its effects to be observed in sanitary indices.

The country, which registers more than 970,000 infected and more than 22,000 deaths, plans to immunize 15 of its 19 million inhabitants before the end of June.