On Sunday, the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, stepped down in response to countrywide protests of his mishandling of national interests. His departure struck a significant blow to the grip of leftist policy on South America.
Also on Sunday, Bolivia’s neighbor, Chile, had a Presidential declaration: its leader, Sebastian Pinera, was not going to step down despite countrywide protests of his mishandling of national interests. Instead, the center-right leader proposed a more focused solution: rewriting the Constitution.
Chile’s Constitution has been in place since 1980, but it is hardly a concrete document. Initiated by the military dictatorship of Pinochet, it had significant issues with power distribution and has often been blamed for restricting liberties and opportunity for what has become, effectively, a large and permanent underclass. This perception has led to the Constitution being modified almost every year since 1997.
This is to be a change: an entirely new Constitution, written by a combination of the leadership of all parties currently participating in their National Congress and placed to a vote of the population in early 2020. The stated goal is to shift the country to become more democratic, expanding power to everyone.
It is at times like this when the United States Constitution should be on full display, as the prototype of such documents. We need leadership which actively supports it, particularly when there are other nations which are working to expand their influence in South America such as Russia and China and we are in a protectionist mode of diminishing our international footprint. It falls to our leadership to demand that the Constitution be followed, and to the people to demand that the leadership do their jobs not as partisans but as patriots.
