Chile: the case against Rabat stalls inside the opposition
The opposition promised a constitutional accusation against Justice Minister Fernando Rabat over 56 commutations of sentence for sexual crimes against minors, and did not file it in the week its own calendar had set. The votes are the reason: 78 are needed, 62 are counted, and 14 deputies of the Partido de la Gente hold the difference.
The Chilean opposition held an emergency meeting of its parliamentary groups on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, and left without filing the constitutional accusation against Justice Minister Fernando Rabat that its own calendar had scheduled for the week of November 2, 2026, according to La Tercera. Hours earlier, from Europe, President José Antonio Kast had challenged the deputies to file the text on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, La Tercera reported.
The challenge was refused in Santiago. “As the opposition we are not going to take the bait,” said Raúl Soto, a deputy and president of the Party for Democracy (PPD), according to El Mostrador, announcing that his bloc would keep its own calendar. El Mostrador reported that the written accusation was in its final stage, that the parliamentary groups had divided the drafting among separate legal teams, and that a new meeting with constitutional lawyers was set for Thursday, November 5, 2026.
The arithmetic that decides it
The Chamber of Deputies has 155 members and an accusation needs 78 votes. The opposition counts on a base of 62 and needs 16 more. The bloc that holds the difference is the Partido de la Gente (PDG, Party of the People), with 14 deputies, who say they will decide only after reading the text and want to vote as a unit. The remaining votes would have to come from dissidents inside Chile Vamos, Kast’s coalition, where deputies have asked for Rabat’s resignation without committing to his removal.
The Chamber has already voted once. On October 28, 2026, it approved by 68 votes to 42, with seven abstentions, a non-binding resolution asking Rabat and the undersecretaries of Justice, Luis Silva, and of Human Rights, Pablo Mira, to leave. A resolution expresses the Chamber’s opinion; the accusation is the instrument that can remove a minister, and the opposition does not yet have the votes to wield it.
The 56 decrees
The case is about 56 commutations of sentence signed between March 11 and September 13, 2026, at a rate of one every three days, according to Interferencia: 27 for sexual abuse of minors and 29 for rape, with a single refusal recorded in the period. The ministry argues that a 2022 legal reform and the case law of the Supreme Court excluded those crimes from the benefit, which would limit the reduction to sentences whose facts occurred before February 9, 2022. The former minister Jaime Gajardo says the criterion in force before him was to reject those requests, and the Office of the Children’s Ombudsman has asked for the case files.
Two other fronts advanced while the accusation waited. Opposition lawmakers asked the Comptroller General of the Republic to release the decrees that authorized the reductions, and in the Senate the accusation’s logic split the left: Yasna Provoste says she will not approve the Justice budget while Rabat remains in office, and Paulina Vodanovic disagrees with making the budget the stage for the dispute.
The accusation is the only instrument that can turn a scandal into a removal, and it is decided by votes.
The polls show the political cost so far. A Criteria survey published on Sunday, November 1, 2026, put Kast’s approval at 25 percent and rejection at 65 percent, his worst numbers since taking office, and found 72 percent opposed to keeping Rabat as minister, according to CNN Chile. The accusation is the mechanism that would settle that cost on the minister and close the case; its delay keeps the case open and keeps the minister in office.
That is the political geometry the opposition has to solve before Thursday. An accusation filed with 62 votes is lost on the floor and leaves the minister strengthened, with a parliamentary acquittal behind him. An accusation filed with 78 removes him and takes the government’s worst file off the agenda. The PDG’s demand to read the text before deciding is the difference between the two outcomes, and the party knows it.
The gaps in the record
No filing date has been set. It is unknown how many of the 56 decrees deal with crimes committed before February 9, 2022, which is the premise of the ministry’s legal argument, and the ministry has not said how it verified the requirements of each case or what safeguards existed for the victims and their families. The Comptroller has not ruled on the request for the decrees, and the government has not accepted a political exit.
The question the week leaves open is whether an opposition that agrees on the diagnosis can assemble the 78 votes that would turn the diagnosis into a removal, or whether the 62 it has at present are the final number.