The counselor of the Portuguese Communities in France, Luísa Semedo, considers that Emmanuel Macron’s speech had no repercussions on the protesters who are in the French streets.
“What seemed to me in the statements is that he was talking to his bases, with those who vote for him and are more on the right and he is trying to prevent these people from joining the demonstrations and protests, because for those who are already in the street, there is nothing new or important that has been heard or requested, he says that he heard it, but he has not listened to it, because nothing has changed, what he was trying to demonstrate, I think, was to his constituents that he is still in the dialogue and that he is trying to do everything so that there is democracy, but, in fact, for those on the street, I think that the speech he gave has not changed anything, quite the opposite. I think there is a lot of frustration in relation to the speech,” said Luísa Semedo to TSF.
The councilor for the Portuguese Communities in France does not believe that the opposition will calm down in the coming weeks and that will only happen if Macron convinces the unions to talk.
“There could be some calm if Marcon and the prime minister somehow manage to have a dialogue with the unions and manage to bring them to the negotiating table, which is difficult because they didn’t want to listen to them for so many weeks, now it will be difficult. Above all, because the unions have been saying for a long time that what they want is for this reform to not go ahead. So it will depend a lot on Macron’s persuasion with the unions. If he can somehow convince the unions, maybe there will be some calm. If not, I don’t think so. At least in the next few weeks, I think there will still be demonstrations,” he considers.
And this dialogue can happen? “It seems complicated to me, because at least the political journalists I have heard, whether they are more on the left or more on the right, are all somewhat unanimous about the very character of Macron, who almost from the beginning always wanted to show his strength, who is somewhat proud and that it has many difficulties to have a social dialogue. He says he’ll have a dialogue, but so far he’s rarely backed down or changed his mind.”
The demonstrations promise to continue, especially as the French president has shown no sign of backing down on raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Source: TSF
