By Athena Papakosta

Even if the May Day protests in France didn’t reach a million protesters, the unions played their tails and won by simply staying united. Macron’s popularity remains at a nadir and French anger over pension reform is running high.

A few years ago, in 2018, we were dealing with the Yellow Vest Movement in the country. This started in the province and involved, initially, opposition to the then proposed fuel hikes to eventually end up calling for greater popular control of government by rejecting traditional political parties and institutions in the country.

Today, the situation in France is different, and that is because the fuse that ignited the flames of popular anger is different.

The current insistence or even Macron’s Bonapartism, for which the French accuse him, to maneuver constitutionally and succeed in passing his pension reform with “this is how I want it” – as opposed to the Yellow Vest Movement – rallied the French citizens and, above all, young people, who discovered, suddenly, that the Fifth Republic has given “supreme” powers to the president of the country over the parliament and the people. However, they attribute to him and him alone the entire responsibility for the way the nature of the presidency is managed, calling him now a “presidential monarch”.

French society has a long tradition of mobilizing to challenge power, and the arrogant, haughty, contemptuous and centralized style of governance for which Macron is accused breeds division, fear and distrust.

It is no coincidence that the… glass of French citizens overflowed when he chose not to talk to the social partners, bypass the French national assembly and activate the special provision of the Constitution 49:3 to pass his pension reform by pushing them French to now work two years longer. The indignation of the French people for a few months about their retirement future turned in a few minutes into anger about their social present, and the streets of Paris and other large cities of France were transformed into a field of “battles” between demonstrators and police forces.

Since that day, last March, until today, his pension reform may have now become the law of the French state, but the atmosphere remains electrified. The French president has since promised 100 days of appeasement, but the French citizens have promised him 100 days of rage, in fact already putting their plan into action.

Monday’s demonstrations were the 13th act of popular opposition to Emmanuel Macron. Hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets of Paris and other major French cities for Labor Day, also protesting Macron’s pension changes. Wild clashes ensued, leading to at least 291 arrests – 90 of them in the French capital alone. According to the Ministry of the Interior, 108 police officers were injured, while the number of injured protesters remains unknown.

Today, Wednesday, May 3, France’s Constitutional Council will decide whether its request for a referendum is acceptable, with the coming weeks likely to hold more appeals by the opposition to French justice against the new law. At the same time, the strike “appointment” is renewed for June 6, two days before the French National Assembly votes on a proposal to revoke the new law.

The crisis of social trust is now a fact and the only winner from this battle is neither the French president nor the French people but the populism that is favored and strengthened by the impasse. The country seems to have suffered a nervous breakdown. Already the French president has even begun to deal with the pots that came out of the kitchens and returned as protest accessories to the streets of the country in the hands of the demonstrators who beat them when Macron or one of his ministers tries to speak. And the serial continues with consent being an unknown word…