The Senate's parliamentary committees will decide this Thursday whether to schedule a vote on José Antonio Kast's government's bid to revive migration reform, according to BioBioChile. The bill seeks to extend the detention period for migrants subject to expulsion orders.
The procedure allows the executive branch to put a bill rejected at an earlier stage to another vote. Its application raised questions on the floor of the upper house, which requested a report from the Constitution Committee's secretariat to clarify how it works.
The committee returned the request last week without an answer. It argued that it was not appropriate for the secretary to comment on the "rules of the game".
The central issue is the voting threshold. The Senate leadership lowered it from 33 to 29 votes, and a section of the opposition decided to take the matter to the Constitutional Court (TC), the body that reviews whether laws comply with the Constitution.
The Socialist Party's caucus leader, Juan Luis Castro, accused the leadership of making a "mistaken interpretation" to "ensure that as few opposition votes as possible are needed for approval." He added that the discussion "does not address the underlying problem, which is how to resolve the migration problem."
National Renewal Senator Andrés Longton responded that the Constitutional Court itself ruled in 2006 that the procedure must retain the voting threshold for constitutional amendments. That threshold changed from two-thirds and three-fifths to the current four-sevenths, equivalent to 29 senators.
"The Constitutional Court settled this in 2006, and what the Senate leadership did was comply with that mandate," Longton said. In his view, the opposition's challenge "has a political character," but that character "cannot take precedence over the Constitution."
The second front concerns the Rules on the Use of Force (RUF), the regulations that establish when and how police and military personnel may use force. The challenge against them awaits the Constitutional Court's admissibility review, the preliminary examination that determines whether the court will hear it.
The opposition questions the principle of rationality in the use of force and the provisions on "potentially lethal" force. Christian Democratic Senator Iván Flores also cited a lack of clarity over the jurisdiction of military courts.
"When civilians are involved, civilian courts must resolve the matter," Flores said, siding with those who petitioned the court.
Republican Party president Senator Arturo Squella asked the opposition to "accept that there has been a shift" in the Rules on the Use of Force. According to him, the changes reflect decisions by parliamentary majorities and seek to move beyond "a logic of proportionality that, in my view, is misunderstood."
The situation has clear winners and losers. If the threshold remains at 29, the government needs less support to advance its reform. The opposition loses its ability to block it and is turning to the Constitutional Court to regain that power.
According to BioBioChile, the opposition does not have the same optimism this time as in previous disputes before the court, although its recent rulings have gone against the executive branch. The first decision comes this Thursday, when the committees decide whether to schedule the vote on reviving migration reform.