Angelique Chrisafis – The Guardian
Anti-government protesters who barricaded roads and fuel depots across France this week are to stage fresh demonstrations in Paris on Saturday, as Emmanuel Macron struggles to quell a national mood of defiance.
The “gilets jaunes” (yellow vests) citizens’ movement – named after the protesters’ fluorescent, high-visibility vests – has caught the French president off-guard. The movement has no leader and its ad-hoc barricades at tollbooths, roundabouts and fuel depots have been organised on social media.
The movement, which began as a protest against rising fuel taxes, has grown into a wider outpouring over inequality, a political class seen as cut off from reality and the pro-business Macron’s persistently negative image as a “president of the rich”.
A poll for Le Figaro on Friday showed 77% of French people felt the planned protests across Paris were legitimate, suggesting even those who were not guarding roadblocks day and night in provincial towns, villages and suburban areas identified with the feeling of disconnect from the governing class.
Marie, 31, a childminder in the Var region of southern France, has been protesting all week at a tollbooth “People are exasperated, there is so much anger – taxes are going up, our salaries aren’t. When you work hard, it feels unfair,” she said.
“My retired parents can’t make ends meet so they had to get work distributing advertising leaflets. The government isn’t listening. To me, Macron is the president of the rich, slashing taxes for the wealthy, ignoring the rest of us. Politicians are cut off from our lives.
“Those in charge are one big oligarchy. The media can’t be trusted either. I’d consider voting Marine Le Pen, but the whole political class is a letdown and I wonder why I vote at all. I worry the future will be even worse for my three children than it is for me.”
Two people have been accidentally killed and more than 530 injured, 17 seriously, in a week of protests and roadblocks over what one 30-year-old factory worker who has been attending roadblocks in the south of France called “a broken society where we’re counting pennies to reach the end of the month, sick of politicians who don’t give a damn robbing the poor to give to the rich”.
Macron, who has built his political identity on a refusal to back down in the face of public pressure or street protests, this week called for better “dialogue” to explain his policies.
The centrist president has insisted his “transformation” of France through loosening labour laws and overhauling the workings of the welfare state would benefit ordinary French people, who have been through decades of mass unemployment.
But he also promised the authorities would be “uncompromising” if protests degenerated into disorder. The government this week instructed police to break up the remaining roadblocks, particularly those around fuel depots and sites of strategic importance.
The French island of Réunion off the coast of south-east Africa, home to 850,000 people, has experienced its worst wave of violence in almost 30 years after riots began on the sidelines of the protests. The island has a 28% unemployment rate – three times higher than mainland France – and more than 40% of people live below the poverty line.
Speaking about events on the island, as curfews were imposed in some areas to break up protests, Macron said: “We will be uncompromising because we can’t accept the things we’ve seen.”
Dominique, 50, an unemployed technician at a roadblock in the town of Martigues, near Marseille, said: “It’s about much more than fuel. The government has left us with nothing.”
Macron, whose personal popularity ratings have reached a new low of less than 30%, has tried to style himself as “humble”. In a TV interview last week, he admitted he had “not succeeded in reconciling the French with their leaders” and vowed to give provinces more of a say in policymaking.
“There are legitimate grievances that have to be given a hearing,” he told his cabinet on Wednesday.
