History of Chilean Constitution of 1980

The current Political Constitution of the Republic of Chile, approved by Chilean voters in a tightly controlled plebiscite on September 11, 1980 (Exactly seven years after chilean coup d’etat), under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, effective March 11, 1981 and amended July 30 of 1989, 1991, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005, replaced the earlier Constitution of 1925 (Written on first Presidency of Arturo Alessandri Palma). In its original permanent dispositions, it gave the President of the Republic a large amount of power and faculties; however, some of these dispositions, such as the power of dissolving the Lower Chamber of Congress and serving eight year terms with possibility of reelection, were modified or eliminated after 1990, when this country regained its democracy and the Congress was reestablished. It created some new institutions, such as the Constitutional Tribunal and the controversial National Security Council (COSENA).

In its temporary dispositions, the Constitution ordered the transition from the former military government, with Augusto Pinochet as President of the Republic, and the Legislative Power of the Military Junta (formed by the Commandants of the Navy, Air force, National Police[Carabineros], and a representative of the Army, the Commandant of the Army being president of the republic), to a civil one, with a time frame of eight years, during which the Legislative Power would still be the Military Junta. It set the first eight year presidential term for Pinochet, with a plebiscite in the eighth year, in which only one candidate, nominated by the Junta, would be accepted or not. The candidate, as expected, was Pinochet himself. While the steps to follow in the case of a triumph of the "yea" option, which the document obviously anticipated, were clearly delineated, the steps for the "nay" triumph were less so, but still clear enough that no serious doubt emerged when the "nay" option actually was victorious in the 1988 plebiscite.

After the plebiscite, several modifications to the Constitution were agreed and subjected to referendum, among them a simplification on the mechanism of future modification.

In 2005 over 50 reforms were approved, through law 20.050, which eliminated some of the remaining undemocratic areas of the text, such as the existence of non-elected Senators (institutional senators, or senators for life) and the inability of the President to remove the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, besides the paper that armed forces got of being guarantors of Constitution. These reforms led the President to controversially declare Chile's transition to democracy as complete. However, the anti-terrorist measures of it remained in force, and it seems that this kind of dispositions shan’t be countermanded during so much time.

The Chilean Constitutions before this last were these:

• Regulation for the amendment of Executive provisory authority of Chile 1811
• Constitutional Regulation 1812
• Regulation for the provisory government 1814
• Constitution of 1818
• Constitution of 1822
• Constitution of 1823
• Federal Essay of 1826
• Constitution of 1828 (Liberal constitution)
• Constitution of 1833 (conservative constitution), and
• Constitution of 1925

An interesting web site, where you can find all the history of Chilean Constitutions is http://www.bcn.cl/pags/legislacion/leyes/resena_const.htm, and besides you can find the official traslation of Chilean Constitution on this website http://confinder.richmond.edu/admin/docs/Chile.pdf, it is a PDF document that is the official traslation from Spanish to English of Chilean Constitution of 1980, in its original text.