Former populist presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has branded Emmanuel Macron as a “pyromaniac” who has set fire to French democracy after the globalist president signed his controversial pension reforms into law in the middle of the night.
Following a month of riots, protests, and labour union strikes across the nation, French President Emmanuel Macron signed into law his pension reforms — which would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64-years-old — after the Constitutional Council cleared the legislation on Friday.
In addition to angering the public on the merits of the legislation, which has been seen as an attack on the working class by the elitist Macron government during a time of economic crisis, the method in which it was implemented further enraged the public, given that it was pushed through the parliament after Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne invoked a constitutional loophole to pass the bill without a vote last month.
In response to the decision by Macron to sign the contentious bill into law during the middle of the night, the leader of the National Rally (RN) in the National Assembly, Marine Le Pen chastised her former rival for attacking French democracy.
“By choosing to enact the unjust pension law at 3:28 am, Emmanuel Macron is committing yet another provocation against the French,” the populist wrote on social media.
“A President of the Republic must bring the French together, but Emmanuel Macron is a pyromaniac who will, alas, have damaged our democracy.”
The widespread resentment against Macron, who has been branded as the “president of the rich” over his globalist style of governance, has seen Le Pen and her National Rally party surge in the polls, with a poll earlier this month finding that in a head to head presidential matchup, she would best Macron by a walloping 10 points, after previously losing to the World Economic Forum darling in last year’s elections.
Meanwhile, trust in Macron has fallen to its lowest level since the 2018 Yellow Vest protests against his plans to impose climate taxes on the public. Aside from the controversial pension reform, the French public has been suffering under economic hardship for years following the Chinese coronavirus crisis and the ensuing draconian lockdowns of Macron’s government.
As a result of the fallout from the Wuhan virus in conjunction with the war in Ukraine, France has seen food inflation soar by 15 per cent over the past year, leading to one in four of the nation’s poorest people beginning to skip meals to make ends meet.
In addition to Le Pen, François Ruffin, a leading member of the leftist La France Insoumise group in the National Assembly, also took aim at Macron for signing the legislation into law overnight.
“Like thieves, Emmanuel Macron and his gang promulgated their pension law in the middle of the night. Because they know it well: what they have just done is a democratic hold-up,” Ruffin wrote.
The trade unions, which have been a leading force in staging the nationwide protests, have also vowed to continue their actions despite the reforms being signed into law, with the CGT trade confederation saying in a statement: “The nocturnal promulgation of the law does not change our fight at all. We will not move on until this law is abandoned.”
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