Five senators from different parties explained the scope of their constitutional security reform, according to Emol. The initiative was submitted to Congress last week and replaces the proposal originally promoted by the executive branch.
The signatories are Arturo Squella (Republican), Pedro Araya (PPD), Karim Bianchi (independent), Iván Flores (DC) and Andrés Longton (RN). They set out their position in a letter published in El Mercurio titled "the Constitution in the face of organized crime". They call it "security reform 2.0".
The first change adds organized crime to Article 9 of the Constitution. That provision currently treats terrorism as contrary to human rights. The senators clarified that they do not seek to create criminal offenses through the Constitution. According to the letter, a law will define which acts are covered and how their consequences are graded.
The second focus is prisons. The lawmakers propose allowing special prison security regimes. The aim is to prevent inmates from issuing orders, coordinating extortion or running illicit businesses from prison. These measures must comply with the law and respect due process, including for those in pretrial detention.
The third change modernizes the state of emergency. The tool currently responds to threats already underway. The proposal would allow it to be declared in response to serious and imminent dangers to public order and current or imminent harm to national security. "The state should not be obliged to wait for a serious threat to materialize before acting", they wrote.
Oversight also changes. The text sets a maximum initial period of 30 days, extensions authorized by Congress and reports from the President at least every 15 days. Parliament could also revoke the measure when its grounds no longer exist.
The letter justifies the reform by citing a "transformation of crime". The senators cite the shopkeeper who pays to work and the family that leaves its neighborhood because of threats. In their view, those cases go beyond policing and threaten fundamental rights and democratic coexistence.
The authors anticipate objections. "We are not proposing unlimited powers or utopian solutions", they stated, maintaining that security and human rights are not opposed. Emol's report, however, does not include views from critics, the government or experts on the initiative.
The alliance spans from the Republican Party to the PPD and the DC. Araya and Flores are also part of the group of thirteen opposition senators who took the Rules on the Use of Force to the Constitutional Court. That breadth gives the authors a political argument: they say the response "cannot be confined to a single administration".
The bill is already in Congress. As a constitutional reform, it must secure the special quorum required by the Constitution. Emol does not report a timetable for its passage or which committee will review it first.
