Macron to pensioners: Stop whining about tax France
President Emmanuel Macron inflicted new damage to his shaky authority yesterday by telling the French that they would be better off if they complained less.
Macron, 40, who has earned public disapproval for seeming arrogant, made his remark in a chat with pensioners while celebrating the 60th anniversary of the almostmonarchical system Charles de Gaulle established.
The president visited Colombeyles-deux-eglises, the general’s home and burial place in eastern France, where pensioners complained that his taxes had cut their meagre incomes.
He said: ‘‘The general’s grandson just told me that his grandfather’s rule was: ‘You can talk very freely. The only thing that you’re not allowed to do is complain’. The general’s practice was a good one. The country would be in better shape if we were like that.’’ He said that the disgruntled pensioners did not realise how lucky they were.
‘‘The French only see what’s being taken away from them,’’ he added.
Retired people have been protesting around France since Macron raised a tax on pensions in January and then blocked an expected rise for inflation.
The president did not name which grandson he spoke with, but it was assumed to be Yves, 67, the businessman whose father was the late general’s son Philippe.
Macron’s latest unvarnished views on the French made headlines on a day that he was casting himself as the heir to de Gaulle, the revered wartime saviour who founded the Fifth Republic on October 4, 1958, restoring stability after a decade of strife.
‘‘The monarch drops in to see the people from time to time,’’ Eric Coquerel, MP for the far left Unbowed France. ‘‘It’s like the ancien regime.’’
Jean-michel Djian, a politics professor and journalist, said on BFM TV, the rolling news channel: ‘‘It was a very nice ceremony but all we’ll remember from it are these improvised words.’’
Nicolas Bay, a leader of the far right National Rally, said: ‘‘Instead of listening to the French, Macron holds them in contempt. When he’s abroad, he criticises them openly. And when he meets them in the street, he upbraids and mishandles them.’’
Macron’s blunt exchange followed remarks several times this year that have been interpreted as condescending, helping to send his approval rating below 30 per cent.
A BFM TV poll found yesterday that 79 per cent of the French see him as authoritarian and 71 per cent think that he is arrogant.
He told an unemployed young man last month that all he had to do was ‘‘cross the street’’ to find work. On a visit to Copenhagen last August he complained that the French were reluctant to embrace change, unlike his hosts.
At Colombey and in a speech to the Constitutional Council in Paris, Macron hailed de Gaulle’s constitution and its presidential system as a huge achievement that had ensured peace and prosperity.
The country was now suffering, however, from a rejection of the political class and institutions in the way that it had in the troubled system of the 1950s.
He renewed a promise to reform aspects of the constitution next year. – The Times