Senate of Chile
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The Senate of the Republic of Chile is the upper house of Chile's bicameral National Congress, as established in the current Constitution of Chile.
The Senate is composed of thirty-eight directly elected senators, chosen by universal popular suffrage vote in 19 senatorial circumscriptions. These serve eight-year terms, with half of them being replaced every fourth year. They must be eligible to vote, have completed secondary school, or its equivalent, and be at least 35 years old.
The Senate sessions at the new (1990) National Congress located in the port city of Valparaíso, which replaced the old National Congress located in downtown of capital Santiago.
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[edit] Abolition of the unelected
Amendments to the Constitution, approved by a joint session of Congress on August 16, 2005, eliminated non-directly elected senators from March 11, 2006, the day 20 newly-elected senators were sworn in, leaving the total number of senators at 38, all directly elected. Previously, according to the Constitution of 1980, "designated" or "institutional" senators were appointed to the chamber. Two heads of state, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle and Augusto Pinochet, were installed as senators for life. Pinochet later resigned from this position and Frei lost his seat in the 2005 reform. However, Frei later won an elective seat and is the current Senate President.
[edit] Current composition
| Affiliation | Members |
|---|---|
| Concertación (coalition) | 20 |
| Socialist Party | 8 |
| Christian Democrat Party | 6 |
| Social Democrat Radical Party | 3 |
| Party for Democracy | 2 |
| Concertación independent[1] | 1 |
| Alianza (coalition) | 17 |
| Independent Democratic Union | 9 |
| National Renewal | 8 |
| independent | 1 |
| Total | 38 |
[edit] Current senators
Senate composition from March 11, 2006. The current President of the Senate will serve from 2006 until 2008.
| Circ. | Region | Name | Party |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tarapacá | Fernando Flores Labra | Ind. |
| Jaime Orpis Bouchon | UDI | ||
| 2 | Antofagasta | Carlos Cantero | RN |
| José Antonio Gómez | PRSD | ||
| 3 | Atacama | Ricardo Núñez Muñoz | PS |
| Baldo Prokurica Prokurica | RN | ||
| 4 | Coquimbo | Evelyn Matthei | UDI |
| Jorge Pizarro | PDC | ||
| 5 | Valparaíso | Carlos Ominami Pascual | PS |
| Sergio Romero Pizarro | RN | ||
| 6 | Nelson Ávila Contreras | PRSD | |
| Jorge Arancibia Reyes | UDI | ||
| 7 | Santiago Metropolitan Region | Guido Girardi | PPD |
| Jovino Novoa | UDI | ||
| 8 | Pablo Longueira | UDI | |
| Soledad Alvear | PDC | ||
| 9 | O'Higgins | Andrés Chadwick | UDI |
| Juan Pablo Letelier | PS | ||
| 10 | Maule | Jaime Gazmuri Mujica | PS |
| Juan Antonio Coloma Correa | UDI | ||
| 11 | Jaime Naranjo Ortiz | PS | |
| Hernán Larraín Fernández | UDI | ||
| 12 | Bío-Bío | Alejandro Navarro | PS |
| Hosain Sabag | PDC | ||
| 13 | Mariano Ruiz-Esquide | PDC | |
| Víctor Pérez | UDI | ||
| 14 | Araucanía | Roberto Muñoz Barra | PPD |
| Alberto Espina Otero | RN | ||
| 15 | Guillermo Vásquez Ubeda | PRSD | |
| José García Ruminot | RN | ||
| 16 | Los Lagos | Andrés Allamand | RN |
| Eduardo Frei (President) | PDC | ||
| 17 | Camilo Escalona | PS | |
| Carlos Kuschel | RN | ||
| 18 | Aysen | Adolfo Zaldívar Larraín | PDC |
| Antonio Horvath Kiss | RN | ||
| 19 | Magallanes y la Antártica Chilena | Carlos Bianchi | Ind. |
| Pedro Muñoz | PS |
[edit] Notes
- ^ Senator Fernando Flores was elected while he was member of the Party for Democracy. However in 2007 he resigned from the party because of disagreements with the party bosses over how to manage accusations of government corruption. Flores is currently listed as an independent, although he still belongs to the Concertación pact.
