Macron’s presidency hangs in the balance, how will he respond?
The image of Marianne – France’s paramount symbol of liberty and reason – with her right eye gouged out was perhaps the most disturbing to emerge from the protest of the Gilets-Jaunes, or Yellow Vests, in Paris last weekend.
The face of the Goddess adorns public buildings throughout the nation, but is nowhere more revered than in the sacred space of the Arc de Triomphe. It was there, guarding the approach to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, that she was attacked on Saturday by a group of hammer-wielding anarchists bent, if not on a repeat of the Revolution, at least on a replay of theévenements of 1968.
For President Emmanuel Macron, newly returned from the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, the assault on the capital, resulting in widespread destruction, was more than a wake-up call, it was a call to arms. The French people, Parisians in particular, have always been impossible to govern. They can transform overnight from the merely aggrieved into an angry mob. Macron has to quieten them down, using a combination of bribes and threats.
The threats are easier to put in place – at least until contact is made with the enemy. Another demonstration, which may include a march on the Élysée Palace, is planned for next weekend, and Macron has vowed that he and his government, backed by the police and gendarmerie, will be ready for the fray.
There is talk of a state of emergency, which would give the minister of the interior the power to ban public protests and to deal with miscreants with whatever force he considers necessary to preserve public order. But the line between lawful authority and repression is a fine one. Missteps by the police, most obviously if they result in death or serious injury to demonstrators, would only make the situation worse, bringing to the streets thousands, even hundreds of thousands, more who have had enough of Macron and are calling for a new, populist style of leadership.
Which brings us to the bribes. What can Macron possibly do that would cause the tide of protest to fall back? He could abandon his newly-imposed rise in fuel duties. It was an increase in the price of diesel that sparked the current wave of protests. But that would immediately open him up to a whole series of demands, including an increase in the minimum wage and a reversal of the reforms now underway that were designed to bring French employment laws into line with those of most other countries in Europe.
If he gives in once, there may be no end to his giving. His five-year mandate would become nothing more than a series of surrenders, ending, quite possibly, with the arrival in the Élysée in 2022 of a new President either of the Far Right or of the Far Left and, along the way, yet another insoluble crisis for the European Union.
What Macron needs to do, as a matter of urgency, is to talk to the people and give them the assurance that he has listened to them and is prepared in future to be a President for all of the French, not just the rich.
He was elected on the promise that he was neither right nor left, but a man of reason, determined to be fair to all and to drag France into the 21st century. Instead, he has courted big business, spent far too much time on the international stage and given the impression that he regards those who are struggling to pay their bills as both lazy and – frankly – stupid.
That phase of his presidency is now, surely, at an end. He cannot cave into the demands of the Gilets-Jaunes. But he can, and must, listen to the voices of those around him who have pleaded with him to adopt a more even-handed approach to political and economic reform.
We are told that the authorities are struggling to identify the leadership of the protests. This comes as no surprise. The Gilets-Jaunes, whose origins lie not in Paris, but in the provinces, where the car, with affordable diesel, is among the necessities of life, are studiedly anonymous. They want their demands to be met, but they don’t want to be held responsible for crimes committed in their name.
They include farmers, small traders, shop workers, teachers, the unemployed and the elderly, all of whom wish to be paid more, ideally for doing less. They are not violent by nature. They don’t wish to pelt the police with steel bolts. But they do nod approvingly, if a little guiltily, when some – who are, you understand, absolutely not them – take their protest to the next level, because that way, perhaps, something may actually get done.
As for the far-left anarchists and right-wing thugs at the heart of the action, they have already begun to have their day in court. Among the hundreds arrested over the weekend were dozens of young men in masks and crash-helmets, known ascasseurs (breakers), who arrived tooled up for an armed confrontation.
It was these, in the main, who looted shops, burned cars and and buildings and ripped down railings to use as both spears and barricades. While the “respectable” Gilets-Jaunes turned away, it was they who sought to turn a protest into an insurrection. It was they who won the victory and they, along with those foolish enough to follow their example, who in courts up and down the land must pay the price.
Le tout Paris, and indeed the whole of France, is looking on to see how the Government, as well as the courts, reacts to the extreme provocation they were offered on Saturday. But along with the reckoning must come the response. The nation is waiting. Macron has to come up with something that goes beyond words. He has to provide reassurance – the carrot along with the stick.
If he fails, his presidency will fail, and if his presidency fails France is in serious trouble. Marianne is bleeding. Macron must bind her wounds.