Le Pen accuses Macron of leading France into a ‘social explosion’

The leader of the French far right and former candidate for the presidency of the France, Marine Le Penaccused, this Tuesday, 21, the president Emmanuel Macronof taking the country to a “social explosion” with its controversy Social Security Reform. “The government is consciously creating all the conditions for a social explosion to happen, it’s as if it’s looking for it,” Le Pen said in an interview with AFP. The leader of the group of 88 deputies from the National Regroupment (RN) said that, in September last year, she warned Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne that it would not be possible to “put out the fire” if the government decided, as happened last Thursday. fair, impose by decree the social security reform. “I met Élisabeth Borne (…) and I told her: ‘Don’t count on me to serve as a firefighter like I did with the yellow vests’”, said Le Pen, referring to the 2018-2019 demonstrations against Macron’s policy, which led to violent clashes between protesters and police across the country. The decision to raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 by decree, without consulting Parliament, sparked protests and acts of vandalism in cities such as Paris, Strasbourg and Dijon, with more than 300 arrested overnight from Monday to Tuesday. and a total of 855 since last Thursday, according to Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin.

After weeks of peaceful demonstrations, various groups of young people have multiplied spontaneous protest acts – more than a thousand so far -, according to the authorities. The unions, who had already warned the government that they feared losing control of the protests if it did not back down from its reform, called for this Thursday a ninth round of strikes and demonstrations in which between 600,000 and 800,000 people are expected, according to the police. . “All this is terribly harmful and, moreover, terribly dangerous: in reality, we are playing French against French”, criticized Le Pen. The people are “furious” and feel “humiliated” because “they feel that the rules of the game of democracy have been betrayed”, added the policy, which was twice defeated by Macron in the second round of presidential elections, in 2017 and 2022.

Macron, who will officially speak this Wednesday, 22, in a television interview at 9:00 am, Brasilia time, has already said during a meeting with his allies that he will not remodel his government, nor dissolve Parliament. He will also submit the reform to a referendum. For Le Pen, with this attitude the head of state “chooses to give the French people a second slap in the face saying: ‘Listen, everything that happened (with the protests) will come to nothing. Anything. No dissolution, no reshuffle, no withdrawal of the law, nothing, we will carry on as if nothing had happened.” Macron is “the only one who has the solution: the solution, when there is a political crisis, is to listen to the people”, concluded Le Pen.

*With information from AFP