Mobilization upwards and new records. One week after the Government resorted to article 49.3 of the Constitution to approve the pension reform without a vote in the Assembly, the French were called to demonstrate this Thursday for the ninth inter-union mobilization day, and here they responded.
Between 1,089 million demonstrators, according to the Ministry of the Interior and 3.5 million, according to the CGT, they marched in more than 300 cities. Very high figures compared to the last day of the mobilization, Wednesday March 15, when 480,000 people (police) and 1.7 million (CGT) had demonstrated.
The renewed mobilization and tensions
Opponents of the pension reform have largely underscored the new impetus taken by the protest movement.
The president of the RN group in the Assembly, Marine Le Pen, declared: “The very strong mobilization today in the demonstrations, in particular in the medium-sized cities, is a strong signal that confirms the massive opposition of the French to the pension reform “.
On the union side, the “renewed mobilization” was welcomed by the CFDT general secretary, Laurent Berger, who had called at noon for “non-violence” to “maintain public opinion until the end.”
However, the demonstrations were marred by an upsurge in violence in several cities in France, in line with the last afternoons of spontaneous mobilizations this week.
broken local records
While the national number of the CGT equals the previous record dated March 7 -the first day of renewable strikes-, that of the police does not reach 1.28 million on this same date.
But, locally, the two sources agree that a record was broken since the beginning of the mobilization on Thursday. For example, in Paris, the authorities and unions announced 119,000 and 800,000 participants, compared to 81,000 and 700,000 on March 7.
But observation in Bordeaux, where 18,200 demonstrators were counted by the police, against 110,000 by the unions. The city of Strasbourg also registered a new record: 12,400 people according to the police and 30,000 according to the unions.
Wanting to benefit from this new dynamic, the unions announced a tenth day of strikes and demonstrations, on March 28, and local union rallies this weekend, to protest against the pension reform.
Source: BFM TV
