CHAPTER I BASES OF INSTITUTIONALITY
ARTICLE 1
Persons are born free and equal, in dignity and rights.
Family is the fundamental core of society.
The State recognizes and protects the intermediate groups through which society organizes and structures itself and guarantees them the necessary autonomy to fulfill with their own specific purposes.
The State is at the service of the human person and its goal is to promote the common good, for which it must contribute to create the social conditions which may allow each and every one of the members of the national community to achieve their greatest possible spiritual and material fulfillment, with full respect for the rights and guaranties established by this Constitutions.
It is the duty of the State to safeguard national security, to provide protection to the population and the family, tending the strengthening of the latter, to promote the harmonized integration of all the sectors of the Nation and to ensure everyone the right to participate in the national life with equal opportunities.
ARTICLE 2
The national flag, the coat of arms of the Republic and the national anthem are national emblems.
ARTICLE 3
The State of Chile is unitary.
The State’s administration will be functionally and territorially decentralized or deconcentrated, where appropriate, in accordance with the law.
The State’s bodies will encourage the strengthening of the regionalization of the Country and the equitable and solidary development between regions, provinces and communes of the national territory.
ARTICLE 4
Chile is a democratic republic.
ARTICLE 5
Sovereignty rests essentially with the Nation. It is exercise by the people through plebiscites and periodic elections, as well as by the authorities established by this Constitution. No sector of the people or individual may claim its exercise.
The exercise of sovereignty recognized the respect towards the essential rights that emanate from human nature as a limit. It is the duty of the State’s bodies to respect and promote those rights, guaranteed by this Constitution, as well as by international treaties which have been ratified by Chile and that are in force.
ARTICLE 6
The bodies of the State bodies must subject their action to the Constitution and the norms enacted in conformity therewith as well as guarantee the institutional order of the Republic.
The provisions of this Constitution are binding both for the officials or other members of the said bodies as well as for every person, institution or group.
The breach of this norm will generate the responsibilities and penalties determined by the law.
ARTICLE 7
The bodies of the State act validly once their members have been regularly invested, within their powers, and in the manner prescribed by the law.
No judicature, person or group of persons may claim, even under the pretext of extraordinary circumstances, any other authority or rights than those expressly conferred upon them by the Constitution or by law.
Any act contravening this article is null and shall give rise to the responsibilities and penalties set forth by law.
ARTICLE 8
The exercise of public functions compels officials to strictly comply with the principle of probity in all of their actions.
All acts and resolutions of the State’s bodies, as well as their grounds and the procedures used, are public. However, only a qualified quorum law shall establish the reserve or secret of them, when their disclosure compromised the proper performance of the functions of these bodies, the rights of persons, national security or national interest.
The President of the Republic, the Ministers of State, the representatives and senators, and all other authorities and officials that a constitutional organic law specifies, will have to declare their interests and patrimony publicly.
The said statute will determine the cases and conditions in which those authorities will delegate to third parties the administration of those assets and obligations which involve a conflict of interests in the exercise of the public function. Furthermore, it may also consider other appropriate measures to resolve them and, in qualified situations, provide for the disposition of all or part of the assets.
ARTICLE 9
Terrorism in any of its forms is in essence contrary to human rights.
A qualified quorum law shall define the terrorist conducts and their penalties. Those responsible for these crimes shall be banned, for a period of fifteen years, from exercising public functions or holding public offices, whether or not of popular elections; or from positions of principal or director of an educational institution, or from exercising teaching functions in them; from operating a social communication media or being a director or manager of it, or to perform in it functions related to the emission or dissemination of opinions and information; or leading positions in political organizations, or those related to education or of a local, professional, entrepreneurial, unions, student, or guild nature, during that period. The aforementioned is understood notwithstanding to other inabilities or those which the law establishes for a longer period.
The crimes to which the preceding paragraph refers to, will always be considered common and not political for all legal purposes, and individual pardon will not proceed in relation to them, except in the case of commuting the death penalty to life imprisonment.
