At least 100 people were arrested during anti-government protests in France on Saturday night. against the pension reform, which raises the minimum age from 62 to 64.
However, this number is lower than in previous protests. More than 200 were arrested across the country Thursday night, a few hours after the reform was passed.
This new type of protests, organized outside parties and unions, are more volatile and unpredictable, and the number of planned mobilizations for this Sunday is not yet known.
Saturday night81 people were arrested in a demonstration on the “Place d’Italie” (in the south of the capital), the place chosen instead of the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysées, in Paris, where the authorities banned protests following from the disturbances of the previous nights.
A dozen more people were subsequently arrested in the Plaza de la Concordia.
At the end of the march, which included ‘shouts’ against the ‘authoritarianism’ of French President Emmanuel Macron, containers were set on fire and barricades were erected. Police responded with tear gas to the throwing of projectiles by some demonstrators.
At the “Place d’Italia”, it is estimated that at least 4,000 people took part in the protests.
In Lyon, 17 were arrested during a small protest, gathering between 400 and 500 people.
The pension reform has further worsened the popularity of the French president, and at the moment only 28% of the French approve of his government, the lowest percentage of his mandates and comparable to the “Yellow Vests” crisis, the popular uprising that brought him to power in 2018.
The executive branch led by Macron does not appear to be going back on the measure. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire assured in an interview with Le Parisien that the reform “will come into effect” and warned that “no violence of any kind will be tolerated” during the protests.
On Monday, the government faces two motions of censure, tabled by a group of centrists and regionalists backed by the left party, and another by the far right.
However, the two motions are unlikely to pass if the Republican Party manages to maintain the voting discipline it failed to achieve on March 16, when the executive, in a relative minority, was forced to act in accordance with Article 49.3 due to the lack of a clear majority in the Assembly.
Union strikes against the reform continue, with several refineries being blocked and strikes at the rubbish collection service in Paris being felt.
Despite the government imposing the return of some workers for health reasons, thousands of tons of rubbish still accumulate on the sidewalks.
The Chamber of Paris, which supports the strike and does not cooperate with the government, calculated that the amount of waste has stabilized at 10,000 tons.
Source: DN
