France has yet to see real violence amid the ongoing anti-Macron riots happening in the country, France’s answer to Bernie Sanders has told journalists.
Prominent French leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon — a man frequently compared to America’s Bernie Sanders — has laughed off journalist questions over ongoing rioting taking place in the country, warning them that they have yet to see real violence yet.
Mélenchon’s statement comes as France finds itself in the midst of a country-wide protest movement aimed at preventing a pension age increase planned by the Emanuel Macron government from coming into force.
Such protests have now regularly devolved into violence across many French cities, with demonstrators setting fires and attacking offices belonging to political parties.
However, according to Mélenchon, the demonstrations could be considered peaceful, all things considered, with the senior leftist figure warning journalists that they had yet to see the movement devolve into real violence.
“You haven’t seen May 68!” Le Figaro reports the politician as saying. “You don’t know what a violent demonstration is!”
He went on to describe the movement as being defined by “remarkable calm and pacifism” in the face of the Macron government, which he says has “no respect for the poor people who are struggling today”.
Though Mélenchon added that he did not support violence playing a part in the protests, the leftist leader’s warning that real violence has yet to take place will nevertheless worry many of the nation’s officials.
Law enforcement in the country has already been forced to deal with widespread rioting, with vandalism and property damage seemingly being par for the course for those policing the demonstrations.
Protesters have also made it very clear that they view the Emmanuel Macron government with abject contempt, pouring gasoline on effigies of Macron and some of his ministers before setting them on fire.
Others have suggested that they are well and truly capable of seeing the French president dismissed from his position as head of state in a manner similar to the country’s pre-revolution king.
“We beheaded Louis XVI and we can do it again with President Macron,” protesters in Paris reportedly chanted.
While Mélenchon does not appear to believe things will end that badly for France’s increasingly unpopular leader, he nevertheless has stated that the government’s planned reforms will end up being repealed by the Constitutional Council — a court with the power to throw out legislation that can damage the integrity of France’s constitution — as a result of the protest movement.
“The Constitutional Council will cancel the whole procedure,” he predicted. “The Constitutional Council knows that its role is to protect the institutions by taking into account what is happening in the country.”
“All this will, in the end, be repealed,” the leftist insisted.
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