Macron’s pension move puts leadership at risk
Raising of retirement age to 64 draws fury in parliament, streets
PARIS — A parody photo appearing on protest signs and online in France shows President Emmanuel Macron sitting on piles of garbage. It’s both a reference to the trash going uncollected with Paris sanitation workers on strike — and to what many French people think about their leader.
Macron had hoped his push to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 would cement his legacy as the president who transformed France’s economy for the 21st century. Instead, he finds his leadership contested, both in parliament and on the streets of major cities.
His brazen move to force a pension reform bill through without a vote has infuriated the political opposition and could hamper his government’s ability to pass legislation for the remaining four years of his term.
Demonstrators hoisted the parody photo at protests after Macron chose at the last minute Thursday to invoke the government’s constitutional power to pass the bill without a vote at the National Assembly.
In his first public comment on the issue since then, the 45year-old leader expressed his wish for the bill to “reach the end of its democratic path in an atmosphere of respect for everyone,” according to a statement Sunday from his office provided to The Associated Press.
Since becoming president in 2017, Macron often has been accused of arrogance and being out of touch. Perceived as “the president of the rich,” he stirred resentment for telling a jobless man he only needed to “cross the street” to find work and by suggesting some French workers were “lazy.”
Now, Macron’s government has alienated citizens “for a long time” to come by using the special authority it has under Article 49.3 of the French Constitution to impose a widely unpopular change, said Brice Teinturier, deputy director general of the Ipsos poll institute.
He said the situation’s only winners are far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party.
As the garbage piles get bigger and the smell from them worse, many people in Paris blame Macron, not the striking workers.
Macron repeatedly said he was convinced the French retirement system needed modifying to keep it financed. He says other proposed options, like increasing the already heavy tax burden, would push investors away, and that decreasing the pensions of current retirees was not a realistic alternative.
The public displays of displeasure may weigh heavily on his future decisions. The spontaneous, sometimes violent protests that erupted in Paris and across the country in recent days have contrasted with the largely peaceful demonstrations and strikes previously organized by France’s major unions.