Violent protests continued in Paris again on Tuesday evening on the tenth straight day of demonstrations against the government of President Emmanuel Macron, which enraged the nation by steamrolling through reforms to the pension system without a vote through the use of a constitutional loophole earlier this month.
At least 70 people were arrested in Paris on Tuesday as France once again saw nationwide demonstrations against President Macron’s push to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64-years-old was rammed through the National Assembly earlier this month without a vote.
According to the Ministry of Interior some 740,000 people protested throughout the country, 93,000 of whom demonstrated in the capital city. The organising CGT trade union confederation — which also has been coordinating labour strikes across France — claimed that two million protesters came out on the streets of France, with 450,000 in Paris, Le Figaro reported. It is possible the true number fell somewhere in between.
French media noted that the demo in Paris did not raise to the level forecast by the Ministry of the Interior, who anticipated “very significant risks of disturbance to public order” on Tuesday evening.
However, some radical protesters continued to clash with police, set fires in the streets, and loot and vandalise businesses, showing that the chaos enveloping the country is likely to continue.
Some 10,000 gendarmes and police officers were deployed in the city of love ahead of the protest and carried out preventative arrests of 27 people believed to be violent instigators. The police forces claimed have seized weapons from black bloc Antifa-style radicals, including knives, hammers, ‘mortar’ explosive devices — quite likely powerful fireworks — and other types of bladed weapons.
Police were also once again seen firing off tear gas canisters into the rowdy crowds, and were seen using forceful tactics to subdue apparent agitators.
The tenth straight day of protests comes amid national strikes that have seen labour union workers walk off the job, causing severe disruptions to social services, notably including the collection of trash, which has seen thousands of tonnes of garbage line the streets of Paris over the past weeks.
The buildup has literally been fuelling the protests, with trash fires frequently being set during protests over the past two weeks.
The CTG announced that the strike for garbage collectors would be suspended on Wednesday in order to clear the rubbish — the build-up of which has sparked concerns of disease outbreaks and an invasion of rats — but the trade union confederation did warn that the strike could once again commence if the government does not withdraw its pension reforms.
The strikes have also seen shortages of fuel at the pump across the country, with workers not only walking out of refineries but some actively enacting blockades to prevent processed fuel from being shipped out.
While Macron’s government appears to be content to try to wait out the protesters, the nationwide chaos will likely continue to serve as a major distraction from his globalist-minded agenda. Mr Macron, who won re-election last year but later lost his majority in the National Assembly, used much of the first year of his second term to jet around the world to various international conferences focussing on nebulous issues such as climate change or on the war in Ukraine.
Macron, a former Parisian Rothschild banker, has also faced widespread criticism at home for being the “president of the rich“, with the government doing little to try to mitigate the ongoing cost of living crisis, which came as a result, in large part, of his government’s decision to enact strict lockdown measures during the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
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