Operation "return to grace" against "casserolades": Emmanuel Macron, who crystallizes all the anger over the pension reform, has multiplied since its adoption the outings in contact with the French, playing proximity and listening to try to relaunch his five-year term and to regain control in the face of dispute.
The opponents of the reform, kept at a safe distance by the police, are waiting for it, at each trip, with a lot of pots and whistles? At the same time, he invites himself to a market to chat with passers-by, or goes to a high school, surrounded by young people urging him to take a selfie.
A lady challenges him on the slowness of his reforms? "Damn it! I wish it were faster!" A gentleman criticizes the bosses of the supermarkets for "not giving a damn about their pockets"? "It shocks me too," replies the former banker.
"Faced with the risk of violence resulting from collective anger, it must stage a strategy of appeasement", considers Fabienne Martin-Juchat, professor of communication sciences at the University of Grenoble-Alpes.
The Head of State, who has lived in retreat at the Elysée Palace since the start of the social and political conflict, is now looking for "face-to-face situations to ritualize the fact that he retains control, renews dialogue “, she underlines, recalling that politics is also a matter of “body confrontation”, of feelings and emotions.
On a café terrace, a market, the halt is never due to chance, even if the element of surprise is there. The spectacle is immediately invited on the news channels.
Catharsis for some, outlet for others, these "small debates" according to the words of a minister replaced the Great National Debate initiated by the Head of State in 2019 in response to the Yellow Vests crisis.
Already mired in a dizzying dispute, Emmanuel Macron then invited the French to express their grievances in public meetings - there were more than 10,000.
But the exercise seemed difficult to repeat in a new climate of mistrust.
The market he visited in Dole (Jura) "symbolizes the people, a daily meeting space, almost familiar, of the order of ordinary social life. Shopping is what is more basic in the domestic space", notes Fabienne Martin-Juchat.
At the same time, the pots were in full swing 100 kilometers away, in the Doubs, where the head of state was expected to commemorate the abolition of slavery.
"His message is then: I am told that I am cut off from reality? Well no, I am in reality. I can go out and you will not be able to lock me up", summarizes François Jost, semiologist and professor emeritus at La Sorbonne Nouvelle.
The exchanges can be lively, muscular but they take place. Emmanuel Macron agrees as often as he can, trying to avoid any provocation that could fuel his trial with arrogance.
"The danger is that he is still quite impulsive, like when he invited an unemployed person to cross the street to find a job," observes François Jost.
Willingly familiar and direct - "yeah", "hey guys", "I've been yelled at enough", "I agree with you 100%" - he tries to quickly put the other person at ease, as if to better disarm him.
For Adrien Rivierre, specialist in public speaking, the president is "rather in his comfort zone" in this kind of exercise.
"He has a rhetorical ability, to take questions, to answer them, a very good ability to react. He knows his subjects well, he can have a sense of humor, he has repartee".
But the fascination for this young president, who came from nowhere and disruptive, has waned since the first five-year term.
"The audience has grown, is less taken in. He allows himself to challenge him in a much more violent way. Some speak to him as they would speak to their brother or cousin", notes Adrien Rivierre.
And, if this attempt to resume contact with the French leads to nothing, "he will be at an impasse", he warns, also pointing to a risk of "paternalism".
"At some point, the I understand you, I know what you are going through no longer works because we know that it does not come from there".
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05/07/2023 14:14:32 - Paris (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
