Macron honeymoon over as cuts loom
THE head of the French military went to war with the president. He lost, but the five-star general’s battle with Emmanuel Macron may signal the end of new leader’s honeymoon period and the start of fierce resistance to his ambitious reforms.
The 39-year-old president had until this week played a near perfect game since moving into the Elysée in early May, winning praise, admiration and even adulation at home and abroad.
Then came the battle with Gen Pierre de Villiers, the head of the armed forces, which many commentators saw as the first mistake by the centrist whose arrival in power decimated the mainstream parties that for decades had ruled France. The general resigned on Wednesday, a few days after Mr Macron very publicly rebuked him, essen- tially accusing him of insubordination, over proposals to slash the military’s budget by around €1billion (£897million) by the end of the year.
Opposition parties and most media commentators were appalled. The conservative Le Figaro newspaper accused the president of “shooting himself in the foot” by behaving “like a little departmental head who is obliged to remind everyone who’s boss”. Left-wing Libération newspaper said Mr Macron’s “little authoritarian fit” could be a sign he was drunk on power and said it was time for him “to grow up a bit”.
“As he has shown no sign that suggests he realises he may have blundered [in his handling of Gen de Villiers], there is the risk that people will come to see him as a president who thinks he is infallible and who hates anybody contradicting him,” Bruno Jeanbart, of pollsters OpinionWay, told the The Sunday Telegraph. The spat with the general is likely to be the first example of the resistance the president is about to face. The country’s second biggest union, the hardline CGT, has already called for a nationwide strike and protests in September to oppose planned labour reforms.
Mr Macron intends pushing the labour reforms through by decree over the summer months, hoping that he can succeed where his predecessors failed.
But even before the resistance planned for after the summer, the president is already facing opposition from several sectors as his government tries to find €4.5billion in savings by the end of the year to bring the deficit under three per cent of GDP as required under EU rules. University staff and local government chiefs are already incensed by proposals to cut budgets.