Chileans go to the polls on Sunday to decide whether to adopt a new constitution aimed at transforming their market-oriented society into a more welfare-based one while enacting sweeping institutional reforms.

Although Chileans had previously voted in droves for a revision of the current constitution, adopted in 1980 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), opinion polls suggest the new text will be rejected.

The social upheaval that began in 2019, when tens of thousands of people demanded a fairer society, sparked the revision of the constitution, but several clauses of the 388-article draft have proved controversial.

“I will reject it because it was a constitution that started badly,” Maria Angelica Ebnes, a 66-year-old housewife, told AFP in Santiago.

“It was enforced by force.”

In October 2019, protests erupted mainly in the capital, led by students initially upset over a proposed increase in subway fares.

It led to greater dissatisfaction with the country’s neoliberal economic system and growing inequality.

Although polls are predicting a rejection of the new constitution, supporters are hoping not least because of what they are seeing on the streets.

On Thursday evening, some estimates put around 500,000 people in Santiago for the official closing of the Approve campaign, while no more than 500 people did so for the Reject gathering.

“People will vote en masse and the polls will be wrong again,” said Juan Carlos Latorre, an MP in left-wing President Gabriel Boric’s governing coalition, who supports the new text.

More than 15 million Chileans are eligible to vote in the mandatory referendum.

The biggest concern of voters is the importance given to the country’s indigenous peoples, who make up nearly 13 percent of the country’s 19 million population.

Proposals to legalize abortion and protect the environment and natural resources such as water, which are now often overexploited by private mining companies, have also attracted a lot of attention.

The new constitution would also overhaul the Chilean government, replacing the Senate with a less powerful “Chamber of Regions” and requiring women to hold at least 50 percent of positions in public institutions.

While recent polls have seen “reject” gains up as much as 10 percentage points, sociologist Marta Lagos believes “approve” could still win the referendum.

In the vast metropolitan area of ??Santiago, the majority of people seem to be in favour, although the north, and especially the south, are largely opposed.

“There’s always a chance that all the polls are wrong, and effectively the advantage for ‘approval’ in Santiago could offset the disadvantage in the north and south,” Lagos told AFP.

“I don’t think that probability is more than five percent, and ‘Reject’ has a 95 percent probability of winning.”

But what is certain is that “the gap will not be 10 points, as the three surveys published in the last two weeks say”.

Only a simple majority is required to adopt the new constitution.

Around 40 world-renowned economists and political scientists announced their support for the new project last week.

However, some fear that the new constitution would create instability and uncertainty, which in turn could hurt the economy.

“What you’re seeing is a certain conservatism in the Chilean electorate that we haven’t seen in years,” Lagos said.

It was certainly muted last December when millennial Boric was elected president.

Supporters of the new constitution say it will bring about big changes in a conservative country marred by social and ethnic tensions and lay the foundation for a more egalitarian society.

They say the current constitution, which gave private enterprise free rein over key industries, has created fertile ground for the prosperity of the rich and the struggle of the poor.

Although the 1980 constitution has undergone several reforms since it was passed, it retains the stigma of having been introduced during a dictatorship.

Having already voted to rewrite the constitution and then elect MPs to do so, Chileans will mark the third time in just two years that Chileans have gone to the polls on the issue.

The new text was drafted by a constitutional convention composed of 154 members – mostly without political affiliations – split equally between men and women, with 17 seats reserved for indigenous people.

The resulting proposal recognizes 11 indigenous peoples and offers them greater autonomy, particularly over judicial matters.

It is the most controversial clause, with some critics accusing the authors of attempting to transform traditionally marginalized tribal peoples into a higher class of citizens.

If approved, the Chilean Congress will begin deciding how to apply the new laws. If the new text is rejected, the previous constitution will remain in place.