![]() ![]() Macron summoned parliamentary deputies from his Renaissance group to the Élysée on Tuesday night. Nothing is going on in the street’.”Įven Cécile Cornudet, the editorialist for the economic daily Les Échos, hardly a mouthpiece for the left, wrote this week that Macron is in denial and is attempting to resume his term in office as if nothing has happened. Philippe Martinez, the head of the communist trade union CGT, called Macron’s interview outlandish. Olivier Faure, the leader of the now tiny Socialist party, said Macron’s “disconnection” was “more and more visible. The president “is completely cut off from reality”, Mélenchon said, accusing Macron of proffering “his traditional forms of contempt”. Trade unionists and leftists, the most vocal opponents to the law, were scathing in their criticism of Macron’s television interview. One of two no-confidence motions fell only nine votes short of the 287 it would have taken to bring down the government. The law had been “enriched by parliamentarians”, Macron said, “voted by the Senate” and “adopted by the Assembly following the use of the article called 49.3, so by a vote of a no-confidence motion against the government which failed”, he explained.Īccording to this sinuous logic, the law is legitimate because a majority of deputies did not vote for a no-confidence motion on Monday. He and Borne both proclaim the procedure, known simply as “le 49.3″ to have been perfectly democratic. Many of Macron’s supporters regret that he did not have the political courage to put the pension reform law to a vote which he feared losing. ![]() ![]() Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images Police face protesters at Place de la Republique in Paris on Tuesday during a demonstration against pension reforms. More than 14 per cent of petrol stations report shortages. Ports, highways, electric plants and universities have been blocked. Trade unionists block petroleum storage sites with burning tyres. The crowds tend to be young, and often set fire to mountains of rotting garbage caused by a rubbish collectors strike. Protesters placed a mannequin resembling Macron in front of an oncoming train, and he is again being burned in effigy in French towns.ĭemonstrations are organised like flash mobs via social media and occur daily in Paris and other cities. On March 16th, the day prime minister Borne used article 49.3 of the constitution to pass the law without a vote, the far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon orchestrated a 6,000-strong demonstration on the Place de la Concorde, where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were guillotined. Macron’s 28 per cent approval rating is the lowest since the yellow vest crisis which marred his first term in office. He said he was “prepared to be unpopular”. The president’s only regret was “not having succeeded in convincing of the necessity of the reform”. I’m not doing this for pleasure I would have preferred not to do it, but that is also why I committed myself to doing it.” The reform must enter into force “before the end of the year”, he said. Macron was combative, determined and unrepentant in the face of continuing unrest. Nothing Macron said in a 35-minute television interview on Wednesday, his first public appearance since prime minister Élisabeth Borne rammed the legislation through the National Assembly without a vote on March 16th, was likely to calm the fury of the protesters. Hundreds of thousands of French citizens, possibly millions, will go on strike and demonstrate on Thursday for the ninth time in two months in the hope of forcing President Emmanuel Macron to abandon a law raising the legal retirement age to 64. ![]()
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