How to be at the top of the state while remaining close to the people? To this basic question, two old veterans of politics, Michèle Cotta, 85, and Patrice Duhamel, 77, respond with a documentary trilogy, the first episode of which, devoted to Presidents facing the street since May 68, resonates particularly with the news – before Presidents and Society and Presidents Facing Terrorism.
The interest here is not in the quality of the archives, more emblematic than rare, but in the very numerous testimonies of former presidents and ministers of the Verépublique. Starting with Nicolas Sarkozy, very lively. Events ? "It's kind of like toothpaste: when it comes out of the tube, you don't squeeze it back in. May 68? “It was the time when young bourgeois bought portraits of Mao and pinned them in their rooms. »
Edouard Balladur maliciously points out that, at the beginning of May 1968, the Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, and the President of the Republic, Charles de Gaulle, were absent: the first was in Afghanistan; the second, in Romania. François Bayrou recites by heart the beginning of the president's radio address on his return from Baden-Baden on May 30, 1968: "Being the holder of national and republican legitimacy..." Less than four and a half minutes, dissolution of the National Assembly, end of the movement. In front of the camera, everyone agrees that they learned a lesson, even a vocation.
"Austerlitz in September"
From 1995, pensions will be a major subject of contention. That year, Alain Juppé announced, in a speech given on November 15, the reform of Social Security, the abolition of special regimes and the extension of contributions from 37 and a half years to 40 years. " It was too much ! (…) It was Austerlitz in September, it was Waterloo in December,” comments Nicolas Sarkozy. He will be on the front line, in October 2010, when the legal postponement of the retirement age will block the country nine days, from 60 to 62 years old – without 49.3.
Among the other major mobilizations mentioned, that of the supporters of the "free school" against the Savary reform, which put 1 million demonstrators in the streets of Paris on June 24, 1984. "The affair was very badly embarked", smiles Laurent Fabius, who will succeed Pierre Mauroy at Matignon, after the announcement of the withdrawal of the law by François Mitterrand, on July 14, 1984.
The most recent movement of the "yellow vests" appears, on the other hand, to be different in every way: no demand, no incarnation, no real politicization. "I saw three individuals who set fire to a bank branch," recalls Jean-Pierre Raffarin. But what I had never seen were 300 people cheering when the first flames came out of the windows. »
