An acrid smell covers the
square of the Paris Opera.
The kiosks appear burned.
The iron grills encircling the trees became projectiles.
There is not a bus stop left with healthy windows or unburned benches.
Burnt garbage cans are scattered in one of the most beautiful tourist spots in Paris, which on Thursday night became the
scene of the war
between the Black Blocs, the Yellow Vests and
a new generation of protesters
, who clashed the police with guerrilla tactics, after taking the lead in a union demonstration.
A desolate, unrecognizable
scenario
, which is the mirror of the conflict that is shaking France, its society and its government.
The pension reform is being diluted in a social anger as irrepressible as it is dangerous, where no one sees a consensual solution.
The unions
will march again
on Tuesday and the risk is that the violence will confiscate their right to protest.
Strikes, from
air traffic controllers to garbage collectors
, are voted to be extended until March 28.
The ninth and broad march against the pension reform on Thursday, with 3.5 million people throughout the country, was overshadowed by 1,500
casseurs
(vandals), who took over and
set fire to everything in sight.
On Friday morning there are still burned garbage cans and traces of destruction and looting of kiosks, boutiques and banks in the Place de l'Opéra and the Bastille, the heart of the wild and nocturnal mobilizations
.
Police block a street near the Paris Opera.
Photo: Bloomberg
Huge social and political crisis
The greatest political and social crisis of the government of Emmanuel Macron spreads to the rhythm of the fires and a tenth march next Tuesday.
Against Macron
From Brussels, the president
called the "inter-union"
to dialogue
, in a change of tone in the face of the radicalization that confronts him.
But today the street protest in France
is in the hands of the ultras
and not the moderates.
His warmongering words from him on Wednesday
only added to the polarization
.
He even had to cancel the state visit of King Charles III of the United Kingdom.
Neither the Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne nor the Minister of Labor nor the Minister of the Interior.
President Emmanuel Macron has become the target of hatred in the demonstrations
. Anti Macronism is on the street, on the posters, in the graffiti. The slogans and threats are against the president.
A slogan was very widespread:
Louis XVI, we behead him.
Macron, we can start again.
Cool or polarized protesters have one thing in common:
they hate the president.
Demonstrators during a protest in front of the Opera, in Paris.
Photo: Bloomberg
This
new exasperated social mood
was produced by the president's decision to apply
article 49.3 of the Constitution
, which prevents a vote on the pension reform in Parliament.
To her is added
the motion of no confidence
rejected by 9 votes
in the National Assembly and his interview on television, where he was "
contemptuous and arrogant
, with his little hateful phrases", according to those who marched.
Macron says he is ready to assume his unpopularity and carry out the reforms, which
must be decided today by the Constitutional Council
and can declare them illegal.
From Brussels, at the Council of Europe, Macron announced: "I am at the disposal of the inter-union to discuss questions related to work if she wants to come and meet me on these issues (...) We must move forward.
The country cannot continue detained."
fires and neighbors
Riot police, on Thursday night in Paris.
Photo: Reuters
In the small rue Saint-Marc, at the Opera, the smell penetrates the clothes.
At number 7, the façade of the studio on the ground floor is completely blackened, devastated by the flames of the previous day.
Paris wakes up in
a heavy atmosphere,
after experiencing the war on the street, with policemen in combat position and firefighters seeking to fight the fires in the street and buildings with their hoses.
Double destruction.
In the streets surrounding the Opera, a tragedy was narrowly avoided.
“I was going home around 8:30.
I saw the flames,
it was terrifying
, ”said Elisa, 62, a resident of 10 rue Saint-Marc, the building right across from the one affected by a fire.
Protesters set fire to their entire path.
Photo: Reuters
On his way to work this Friday morning, a neighbor from the neighborhood, near the famous Café de la Paix, shows a tired face.
“
I barricaded myself in my apartment
on the eighth floor.
I smelled smoke.
It was horrible.
It was the war in the street, between the demonstrators, the firefighters, the neighbors who were trying to put out the fire.
We can't take it anymore
."
The owner of the kiosk in the Plaza de la Ópera saw from his home television how they were advancing to set it on fire.
He ran towards the place.
The protesters fueled the fire by throwing a trotinette (electric skateboard) inside, which has
a lithium battery.
The kiosk became
an ember
.
Today its owner has no job, they stole the box from the kiosk before setting it on fire and all its material.
Restaurants in the Opera and Bastille area have lost 80 percent of their profits.
They close at night so as not to be burned or destroyed.
The Bastille
is the soul of wild demonstrations,
the place where they call themselves on social networks to fight the police at night.
All businesses lower the curtain now.
Gendarmes protect themselves behind a wall, on Thursday night.
Photo: Thomas SAMSON / AFP
"There were 30 meters of garbage cans against the façade," laments Franck Langrenne, owner of the Clémentine restaurant, a neighbor of the building damaged by the fire at the Opera.
A torch of a young person burned.
The tenant was not present.
The entire building was evacuated, with no injuries.
Langrenne had anticipated it.
“I called my clients on Wednesday to inform them of my closure this Thursday night.
I didn't think I could guarantee their safety with the strike movement that was going on."
With the clashes with the police, the demonstrators grabbed the garbage cans and set them on fire against the walls of the houses.
The risk was that the buildings would catch fire
or the neighbors would suffocate from the rising smoke.
First the neighbors came out with fire extinguishers.
Afterwards, only the firefighters could help them and evacuated the buildings at risk.
But they left them flooded by water
.
The neighbors will not return to their houses for weeks.
The damage is significant.
“Everything is dead, burned but also flooded by firefighters.
The protesters stole my money and merchandise.
I stayed all night to avoid being looted for the rest.
I support the movement.
But I find myself without a job, because it takes at least three weeks to fix everything," said the Opera newsstand.
the dispute hardens
The dispute is heating up.
First by the number: the demonstrations
were bigger than last week
.
The CGT announced that 800,000 protesters had marched in Paris.
Strike movements have also increased in the civil service, energy and transportation.
Young people have entered the scene
, organizing blockades at high schools and universities, including Panthéon-Assas University, which is
known for its aversion to any social movement.
“When there is a conflict, the role of the President of the Republic
is to calm things down.
Emmanuel Macron threw a can of gasoline on the fire ”, denounced Philippe Martínez, general secretary of the CGT, who has been leading the last few weeks in his position.
An uncontrollable protest?
The risk at these times is that the protest becomes uncontrollable for the unions, which represent the majority of the protesters.
The anger has been left
in the hands of France Unsubmissive,
of Jean Luc Mélenchon's revolutionary delusion that "the crowd come out to win the street", in an incendiary climate.
It is the Unsubmissive France that wants to replace the unions, with whom it has terrible relations.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin was "concerned by the radicalization" of the protesters.
There were 457 detainees and 441 police officers and gendarmes injured yesterday.
“Many don't just want to hurt a police officer.
They
can kill a policeman and rejoice
, ”denounced the interior minister.
Human rights organizations have also denounced police violence.
The minister recalled that the policemen are with
"a stroke of fatigue", after seven days of day and night repression.
Added to the figure is an increase in violence.
Clashes broke out in Nantes and Rennes, while in Paris barricades were set on fire, windows were smashed and a bank and warehouse were attacked.
If the mobilization increases, you also risk escaping from the unions and thus becoming uncontrollable.
Clashes also broke out in Rennes.
Photo: Reuters
The other cause for concern for the government lies in the state of public opinion.
A survey by Odoxa Backbone Consulting, carried out for Le Figaro, reveals that
three-quarters of the French
were not convinced by Emmanuel Macron's speech on Wednesday, "the worst intervention in the history of Emmanuel Macron's post-tests", he comments the Institute.
There is even
an increase in support for the mobilization
: "67% of the French believe that the movement must continue", six points more than last week. This will not fail to make the unions think, who are already planning to continue with the mobilization.
The editorial of Le Figaro: "Everything is shaking"
“A modest reform based on relentless demographic observation has led France to an
existential crisis,
where everything is tottering: the government, the Assembly, the street.
This disproportion cannot be attributed solely to the unpopularity of the president, to the clumsiness of his ministers, to the "refractory" spirit of the Gauls, to the revolutionary rage of La France Insumisa," wrote the conservative daily Le Figaro in its editorial this Friday. .
“It is a much deeper malaise that comes to the surface.
That of
a country harassed by its economic decline
, its cultural fragmentation, its aging.
That of a singularly negative democracy, where the supreme position is held by
the candidate who can prevent the election of Marine Le Pen
, ”added the conservative newspaper.
alone and without majority
Macron is weakened, alone, fragile and without a parliamentary majority.
He will have to govern four more years and he has no way to achieve it.
If he dissolves Parliament, he opens the way for Marine Le Pen and his populism.
Macron is weakened, alone, fragile and without a parliamentary majority.
Photo: Reuters
If he doesn't, he will have to build a majority with the conservative Republicans, with the Modem, with the UDI, who have slowly left his ranks, fed up with his methods, with the famous “little phrases”
.
A socialist intellectual, who accompanied and advised Macron in his early days, is one of the disillusioned.
“He is a petty bourgeois from the interior, reactionary, ambitious,
who despises politics and believes that he can only govern with his narcissism.
Today there is neither a Mitterrand nor a Chirac in France.
The crisis is serious and he will have to bury this reform and start over.
He will have to create consensus and pray that Europe does not become financially destabilized in the face of war”, he said.
In the immediate future, Emmanuel Macron, more isolated than ever, will have to jointly resolve a social crisis that is taking hold and hardening and a political crisis that is disarming him.
Faced with both, he must
do what he does not want: concessions.
Paris, correspondent
ap
look too
Pension reform in France: they ask for the resignation of Prime Minister Borne and the strikes and protests continue
Anger, riots and burning of garbage at night in Paris against the pension reform sanctioned by Macron
