Chile will deploy some 65,000 security personnel for the constitutional referendum

The Chilean government has announced the deployment of some 65,000 troops to guarantee security during the election day on September 4, in which Chileans will be called to decide whether to approve the new draft Constitution.

Some 45,000 Carabineros agents and more than 25,000 from the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be in charge of guarding a process that Interior Minister Izkia Siches expects to be “orderly, calm and peaceful”, according to the newspaper ‘El Mercurio’.

The minister, who has met with representatives of some of the institutions involved, has appealed to Chile’s “historical tradition” to bet that it will be an “exemplary” day. There are also contingency plans for possible demonstrations.

The polls are leaning for now towards the rejection of the new Constitution, which is called to bury the Magna Carta that has ruled Chile since the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. A survey published this week by the firm Cadem puts at 46 percent the proportion of those who reject the new text, compared to 38 percent who support it.

The draft has been elaborated by a Constitutional Convention created ‘ex profeso’ for this purpose and which emerged as a tool to contain the social discontent that erupted in October 2019.