Bystander slaps Macron, two held
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron was slapped on Tuesday in the face by a bystander during a visit to the town of Tain-l’hermitage in southeast France’s Drome region. Macron’s office confirmed a video of the incident widely circulating online.
In the video, Macron is seen reaching out his hand to greet a man in a small crowd of onlookers standing behind a metal barrier after the president visited a training college for the hospitality industry.
The man shouts “Down with Macronia” and then slaps the French president on his left cheek. He can also be heard shouting “Montjoie Saint Denis”, the battle cry of the French army when the country was still a monarchy.
Two people were arrested following the incident, a police source told Reuters. The identity of the man who slapped Macron, and his motive, were unclear.
Macron was on a visit to the Drome region to meet restaurateurs and students and talk about returning to a normal life after the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was one of a series of visits he is making, his aides say, to get a feel of the nation’s pulse before a presidential election next year. After a brief pause, he continued his visit to the region.
In May 2021, the army inducted the first batch of women into the Corps of Military Police, the first time that women joined the military in the non-officer cadre. Women have been serving as officers in select branches of the three services since the early 1990s.
Tanks and combat positions in infantry are still no-go zones for women, who were allowed to join the armed forces outside the medical stream for the first time in 1992
Excluding the medical wing in which women have been serving for decades, the army as of February 2021 accounted for 6,807 women officers, the IAF (1,607) and the navy, 704. In percentage terms, women still form a small part of the military -- 0.56% of the army, 1.08% of the air force and 6.5% of the navy.