French President Emmanuel Macron, booed on Wednesday in Sélestat (east) for his first walkabout since the promulgation of the unpopular pension reform, assured “hearing the anger” of his fellow citizens, but affirmed his desire to go in contact with them.
Throughout his trip to Alsace, the first in weeks and after the promulgation on April 14 of the reform providing for the postponement from 62 to 64 of the legal retirement age, he was welcomed by small hostile opposition groups.
“You have to hear the anger, I’m not deaf to it,” said the head of state in Sélestat, a small town near the German border, where he was booed several times. “This anger is coming out, I didn’t expect anything else, but it won’t stop me from continuing to move,” he said.
Despite the “Macron resignation” fusing from the demonstrators kept behind barricades, he went towards the crowd, shaking a few hands before being quickly arrested.
“You will soon fall,” a man told him, while a young woman asked for “a sign of appeasement” which according to her does not come.
“We made concessions […]. We will continue to improve things on working conditions, ”retorted the head of state. “I don’t ask people to make the tough decisions for me,” he added.
“Seen much worse”
Over the course of the visit, the tone of the exchanges nevertheless became more friendly, with sometimes encouragement to “hold on”, noted AFP journalists.
“There are people who are not happy, I’m not going to not go into contact because there are people who are not happy. Everyone must express themselves freely,” commented the president, confident that he had “seen much worse”.
Even before his arrival in the small town of Muttersholtz, where he visited a company specializing in wooden construction, a hundred demonstrators, drumming and chanting hostile messages, were repelled by the police. They were then kept at bay.
“Saucepans will not move France forward,” reacted Mr. Macron. A call to sound pots had been made in some cities of the country during his last speech on television.
The CGT union claimed a power cut in the factory it was visiting, which did not, however, plunge the premises into darkness.
The inter-union opposed to the pension reform had invited Tuesday to protest loudly against the arrival of the head of state.
“Your 100 days are without us”
Some demonstrators carried placards reading “Jupi get out”, an allusion to the nickname “Jupiter” given to the president for his vertical conception of power, or even “your 100 days are without us”, in reference to the 100 days that given Monday evening Mr. Macron during a televised address to appease the country and launch new reform projects.
Tuesday evening, a private trip by the head of state to Saint-Denis, near Paris, had already attracted some 300 demonstrators.
Several members of the executive or the presidential entourage, however, encourage Emmanuel Macron to renew direct contact with the French.
“Each of us is destined to go into the field. The President of the Republic is obviously the best ambassador of the policy conducted in this country for six years, ”said government spokesman Olivier Véran on Wednesday.
The Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, was also delighted that he “could be on the ground” to “hear a certain number of these demands as well”.
After Alsace, Mr. Macron has planned a trip to the south-east of France on Thursday, devoted to school.
Since the presentation of his pension reform in January, the president had remained in the background at the Élysée, making few trips to the country.