September 6, 2022: -Chileans voted against a proposed recent constitution on Sunday, which rejected what would have been one of the world’s most progressive charters.

While nearly 80% of Chileans voted to draft a recent constitution in 2020, 62% of voters rejected the coming text, with 99.74 percent of ballot boxes counted.

Karol Cariola, the spokeswoman for the approval campaign, conceded defeat in downtown Santiago but said the mandate to draft a recent text remains in force on Sunday.

“We are committed to making conditions to channel that popular will and the path that leads us to a recent constitution,” Cariola added.

President Gabriel Boric, whose government is primarily tied to the new text, said cabinet changes were coming, and the government would work on drafting another constitution.

“We have to listen to the voice of the people. Not just today, but the previous intense years we’ve lived through,” Boric added. “That anger is latent, and we can’t ignore it.”

The president added that he would work with congress and different sectors of society to draft one more text with lessons from Sunday’s rejection.

Center-left- and right-wing parties that promoted the rejection campaign have agreed to negotiate to prepare a recent text.

“I think two things are explaining what has just happened. One denies the Boric government,” political analyst Cristobal Bellolio told Reuters, which added that the other was identity politics regarding indigenous and different issues.

The proposed text that voters denied was a response to widespread violent protests that gripped the nation in 2019 and focused on social rights, the environment, gender parity, and indigenous rights, a sharp shift from its market-friendly record, which dated back to the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.