Tensions simmer as Macron still faces anger of the ‘left-behinds’
FRANCE is at one and the same time a sombre and embittered place right now.
Sombre in that it mourns the latest victims of a seemingly Islamist inspired terror attack in the city of Strasbourg and embittered after weeks of almost unprecedented street protests in Paris, that have pushed President Emmanuel Macron into a uncharacteristic climb down.
Nebulous yet vicious, the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protest movement follows in a long French tradition of taking politics on to the streets. France after all is a republic that was founded in popular violence.
In more recent times, certainly since Charles de Gaulle established the constitution of the Fifth Republic in 1958, the centralisation of power in the Presidential palace has had the unintended cyclical effect of making street protests and demonstrations the only dynamic alternative to government policy.
Ugly as the scenes in Paris have been, the gilets jaunes, their grievances and demands appear to have captured the imagination of many far beyond France.
Earlier this week the news website Commonspace ran a story saying that
Scots are preparing to start their own yellow vests movement, “mimicking the French demands for economic justice”.
In far-off Egypt meanwhile, the authorities there have restricted the sale of yellow reflective vests amid fears opponents might attempt to copy their French counterparts during next month’s anniversary of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
But whatever the universal appeal of the gilets jaunes, it remains France on which eyes are focused and on a movement that began as a form of grassroots opposition to rising fuel prices but has since become about so much more.
There is now no doubt that the gilets jaunes have given voice to the genuine economic and social distress in a peripheral and middle France that sees itself alienated and financially exploited by the country’s privileged metropolitan elite.
As Aurelie Dianara, a research associate in international economic history at the University of Glasgow recently pointed out, over the last two decades the largest fortunes in France have increased tenfold.
This figure, Ms Dianara says, stands in marked contrast to a study by the French Economic Observatory (OFCE), which revealed that alongside this hike for the rich, French families’ average “purchasing power” has fallen by 440 euros a year since the 2008 financial crisis. Even Mr Macron the former Rothschild banker appears to have recognised that France is anything but an economic level playing field right now.
As part of the climbdown, handouts and back tracking in his 13-minute speech on Monday night, the president announced that minimum wage workers would receive an increase of 100 euros per month. There would also he said be an exemption from taxes on overtime pay, and an exemption on certain social security taxes for retirees who earn less than 2,000 euros a month.
The pressing question now of course is whether this will be enough to take the sting out of the protests?
A hike to the minimum wage and a Christmas bonus may quell the violence from some of the yellow vests, but it’s unlikely to win over the die-hard troublemakers, who in part have hijacked the movement.
At best though it might just make others think twice about strapping on their vests again ahead of the festive holidays, giving Mr Macron time to rethink his way out of the crisis.
Whatever the short-term impact of Mr Macron’s speech is, it remains unlikely to boost his popularity or make him seem any more relatable to the two-thirds of French people who view him as the “president of the rich”.
As a number of commentators have observed, the speech itself was pre-recorded and laced with phrases that could just as easily have come from earlier Fifth Republic presidents like De Gaulle.
Many also expressed dismay that a president so prone to delivering lengthy speeches on the virtues of globalisation and European integration should, after two weeks of deafening silence, spare a mere 13 minutes to address the worst domestic crisis of his presidency.
There seems just no escaping the fact that among the ranks of many French voters that sense of having been deceived is a problem that has haunted Mr Macron since his election victory last year.
After all he did campaign on promises to make France’s economy better and reduce unemployment. And while to be fair growth has come slowly over the past year, unemployment, while lower, is still hovering just above nine per cent.
As for the gilets jaunes themselves, the violence on the streets and damage caused in the riots has lost them some support and ironically made an already sluggish economic situation even more vulnerable.
For the moment polls on support for the gilets jaunes are at best contradictory but reveal a major shift in public opinion.
One poll, carried out by Opinionway, said 54 % of those surveyed wanted the protest to stop, while 45 % wanted it to continue.