Since the use of 49.3 on the pension reform, Thursday, March 16, they have not loosened their teeth. At 6 p.m. each evening they are there, gathered on the Place de la République, between the prefecture and the Lille Palace of Fine Arts. Mathilde C., high school history teacher, is one of those disappointed people who won’t give up. Arms crossed, she stands alone, in silence, in the middle of the crowd, in her purple coat. “I am against this reform, and absolutely disgusted by the method used, explains the forties in a calm tone. We have reached a very worrying degree of disconnection between the people and the government. Macron listens to no one, hears nothing. All his speeches seem solemn, whereas they only cover emptiness. This contempt, this deafness, I can no longer bear them. I’m usually a quiet person, but here…”
At the beginning of the weekend, the faces are crumpled and the eyes weary. The day before, two young communist activists were injured by the police, hit in the head by truncheons during an improvised demonstration, bringing together several thousand people. Students sprayed with tear gas, loaded procession, swept through the small streets around the Sébastopol Theater: the impressive images have gone around social networks.
A few meters away, 20-year-old Arthur Petit holds a homemade sign. “This vote obliges me,” it read. A sentence pronounced by Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the last presidential election, in April 2022. “What he did with the citizens’ convention for the climate, I experienced it as a betrayal, traces the student from Laon , currently in her third year of medicine. We have the impression that he is doing everything to make himself detestable: he wants to make history, to end his five-year term with his reforms, whatever it costs us. Its balance sheet is a denial of democracy – it has just taken a hell of a blow in the ribs, there – and a stepping stone for the National Rally in the next elections. »
Around 7 p.m., the square empties in an instant; the procession rushes into the rue des Postes, under the gaze of the customers seated at the terraces of the bars. Corrado Delfini, 65, came alone to swell the flow of protesters. “It feels like crap; it comes from there, resentment, more than reform,” observes this retired economist, father of three children in their thirties.
If the substance of the text is considered disastrous, Macron’s personality is just as reviled. “Haughty, haughty,” described one. “I always found him a bit young to govern,” said a 50-year-old posted on the sidewalk. The president’s age, his previous career as an investment banker, the tone he uses to express himself when he speaks to the French: nothing finds favor in his eyes. “Cod liver oil is bad, but lots of people have been swallowing it for years. Macron, it’s the same, asserts this Algerian, installed in the North for many years. He’s missing the mark, even if it’s not just him…”
The parade continues smoothly, despite some tense moments. An elderly woman, close to the Yellow Vests, garland students who jump and recoil when the CRS tense their muscles. “We were gassed, gutted, and we didn’t back down,” she says indignantly. It’s because of you that it’s going to screw up, that Macron is going to win! »
In a parallel reality, a few hundred meters away, a skewer of stars in their thirty-ones walk the red carpet of Series Mania, a festival dedicated to television productions from around the world. Sunday morning, at the Théâtre du Nord, one of the scheduled debates was interrupted by around twenty opponents of the pension reform. Can we represent the war in series? questioned the event. “49.3: War in the streets, not on your screens,” read a banner held up on stage by protesters.
Consult our file: Pensions: the big bang
