Emmanuel Macron wished on Sunday, on the eve of a decisive day in the Assembly, that the pension reform "can go to the end of its democratic journey with respect for all", while anger remains strong in the street and that parliamentary offices have been targeted.
"After months of political and social consultation and more than 170 hours of debate which resulted in the vote of a compromise text between the Senate and the National Assembly, the President of the Republic expressed to the two Presidents (of the Senate and of the Assembly, editor's note) its wish that the text on pensions can go to the end of its democratic journey with respect for all", indicated the Elysée in a message sent to AFP.
The reform, which pushes back the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, will be definitively adopted on Monday if the two motions of censure targeting the government of Elisabeth Borne are rejected. If they were voted, which is a priori unlikely because of the arithmetic in the Assembly, the government would fall.
The Head of State also assured of "the mobilization of the government so that everything is implemented" in order to "protect" the parliamentarians threatened by opponents of the reform.
The pressures on the Macronist deputies or LR have multiplied, with many parliamentary offices targeted with tags and vengeful inscriptions, and that of Eric Ciotti in Nice stoned in the night from Saturday to Sunday with the inscription "La motion ou the pavement".
Rallies also continued on Sunday, for the fourth consecutive day, throughout the country, prompting union leaders to again demand an abandonment of the text, for fear of a lasting "resentment" in the population.
"It's the anger that lives in me, a cold anger but an immense anger", told AFP Isabelle Desprez, a 54-year-old mathematics professor, who was demonstrating in Lille, judging "impossible" to end her career " at age 64 without harm to (his) health".
For Laurent Berger, number one of the CFDT, "we went from the feeling of being despised to a feeling of anger, in particular because we deprived the employees of the result of their mobilization", namely, according to him, the rejection of the text in the National Assembly if it had passed to the vote. The government has chosen to resort to 49.3 which exempts it from such a vote.
"The growing resentment and anger must serve the mobilizations in a peaceful framework and not be politically exploited", adds the leader in an interview with Liberation.
The inter-union calls for a vast day of mobilization on Thursday.
Anger and resentment that the presidential majority also seems to perceive. The president of the Renaissance deputies Aurore Bergé judges as well as the votes of Monday, on the motions of censure, will be a moment of "clarity" and that it will then be necessary to "rebuild the link" with the French.
After several days of mobilization and demonstrations, at the call of the inter-union, the recourse Thursday to article 49 paragraph 3 of the Constitution by Elisabeth Borne set fire to the powder, with sometimes overflows in the street.
Sunday evening, several hundred people gathered around the vast Parisian shopping center Les Halles, notably chanting anti-Macron slogans. Seventeen people were arrested, according to a police source.
Philippe Martinez, at the head of the CGT, says "not to understand" that "the government and especially the President of the Republic do not take our alerts seriously". "It is the responsibility" of Emmanuel Macron "if the anger is at these levels", according to him.
The two motions tabled, by Liot (Freedoms, Independents Overseas and Territories) and by elected representatives of the National Rally (RN), will be debated and put to the vote of the National Assembly from 4:00 p.m.
Monday will also be the first day of the 2023 baccalaureate specialty exams, for nearly 540,000 high school students, against a backdrop of strike threats by supervisors.
The Ministry of Education will mobilize additional supervisors in order to "allow the conduct of the tests in the best conditions". In case of delay due to a transport strike, there will be an adjustment of the test time so that the candidate can work for the planned duration.
On the side of the garbage collectors' strike, the town hall of Paris estimated on Sunday the volume of waste not collected in the streets at 9,600 tonnes, down slightly.
This strike also affects other cities, in the provinces: in Rennes, garbage cans have been piling up on the sidewalks for a week and in Nantes since at least March 15.
vl-fmp-bj-ld-bur/al/or
03/19/2023 23:23:50 - Paris (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
