Paris
Macabre references to beheadings have dominated the latest crisis in French democracy. “Decapitate Macron” graffiti is commonplace, as protesters compare the President of the 5th Republic to an ancien régime monarch fit only for the guillotine.
They are furious at the way he bypassed a parliamentary vote on raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 last week, and instead pushed through the hugely unpopular measure by emergency decree. Even when opponents of Emmanuel Macron’s government attempted to bring it down with two no-confidence votes on Monday, both failed — the principal one by only nine votes. This was despite opinion polls showing that close to 70% of the country is against the reform, and multiple MPs receiving death threats advising them not to support Macron.
Constituents reacted with more of the rioting which first broke out on the Place de la Concorde — the largest square in Paris, and the place where Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were executed at the height of the French Revolution.
“Of course, people are angry — the parliamentary system isn’t working,” a 19-year-old protester told me as he made his way through the city with a gang on Monday night. “Macron thinks he’s the king and can do whatever he likes, despite nobody agreeing with his policies.”
Gatherings have by now been banned on Concorde, so the fast-moving protesters were destroying building sites nearby, setting fire to bins, and chanting “Rise up Paris!” Convoys of police vans were in pursuit with sirens blazing, all of them full of riot control officers preparing to engage the citizenry with batons and tear gas. In all, 234 arrests were made in the capital last night.
While youngsters inevitably spearhead the disorder — many are students who can outrun plodding police wearing body armour — there are plenty from older generations who join in. They include manual workers approaching retirement — those who feel that Macron, a former merchant banker and tax civil servant, represents a soft financier class with little idea about what real labour entails.
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