Burnt effigy, call for “regicide”, Emmanuel Macron crystallizes hatred again after his forced passage on pensions, an escalation which is reminiscent of that of the Yellow Vests even if it remains contained for the time being.
Demonstrators have taken to the streets every evening since the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister decided on Thursday to resort to 49.3 to have this text adopted, engaging the government’s responsibility for this flagship reform of Macron’s second five-year term.
And, even if Elisabeth Borne is not spared, the person of the head of state is particularly targeted.
“Macron, we can start again! Louis XVI, Louis XVI, we beheaded him!” chanted young people in Paris and Toulouse.
A head in his likeness was also brandished at the end of a wooden handle at a rally in Châteauroux in early March.
“Since the Yellow Vests, he has crystallized a lot of resentment and hatred on his person”, notes Anne Muxel, director of research at Sciences-Po.
In December 2018, the head of state was booed and insulted in Puy-en-Velay when leaving a prefecture set on fire by demonstrators. “Die!” said a woman as the motorcade passed.
A year later, a representation of Emmanuel Macron at the end of a pike had aroused the indignation of the former Keeper of the Seals Robert Badinter.
This young president, willingly brave, from the ENA and the world of banking, quickly embodied arrogance in the eyes of his detractors.
“It is inherent in his person, he is a divisive president, adored or hated. And otherwise he would not have been president”, concedes a framework of the presidential camp.
With the Covid crisis in 2020, “anger has taken a back seat, not distrust. There is again this feeling of the French of not being heard, listened to”, continues Anne Muxel.
“Whatever the crises he has faced, there is a communication problem. He never manages to get messages across,” she adds.
The Yellow Vests movement, born spontaneously to protest against the increase in a fuel tax, had led to blockades of roads and roundabouts and massive rallies every Saturday, punctuated by violence.
Obviously, the current crisis “is based on the same extremely deep distrust of political institutions, including local ones”, notes Luc Rouban, research director at the CNRS.
The vindictiveness also extends to the deputies who had said they were ready to vote for the pension reform and some of whom saw their permanence tagged or stoned.
By opting for 49.3, the executive gives “the image of an isolated, minority power, which expedites parliamentary work” and “launches above-ground policies (far) from the reality of French life”, observes Luc Rouban.
As with the Yellow Vests, this spontaneous anger is also fueled by fears weighing on purchasing power. It remains to be seen whether it will settle in the long term, whether the law is definitively adopted on Monday or not, at the end of the examination of the motions of censure against the Borne government.
After gatherings very supervised by the unions in recent weeks, “the mobilization will be reduced, the days will be spaced out and we will meet every Saturday with yellow vests”, predicts a union official, who does not exclude ” several months of brothelized Saturdays until the summer”.
On the side of the government, we rather expect occasional radicalized movements, which will antagonize public opinion and die out on their own.
“People are still aware that we are in an inflationary, economic, perhaps financial crisis, and that at some point we need responsibility,” says a government adviser.
03/20/2023 19:25:00 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP