French President Emmanuel Macron is now travelling around France with his own electric generator as protesting French unions keep cutting off power during his regional visits, a report claims.
Under massive pressure as a result of his controversial pension reforms, Macron is currently undertaking a public-relations blitz in France in the hopes of rallying the general public to his side.
However, his whistle-stop tours of various regions across the country have not been going well, with the President’s visits often being met with protesters noisily banging pots and pans in the hopes of derailing the PR stunt.
To make matters worse, trade unionists with access to the country’s national grid have also taken to cutting the power in areas where Macron is stopping in an effort to cause even further chaos for the head of state.
Such a scheme appears to be working, with French Broadcaster TF1Info reporting the President and his entourage as now bringing along a truck-mounted diesel electric generator when visiting an area, seemingly in an attempt to circumvent the cuts.
The fossil fuel-burning generator was spotted during the President’s latest visit to the town of Vendôme, with one journalist with the broadcaster claiming it was there to “avoid” disruptions that occurred during previous outings. Video footage from the location showed the generator running, and thick power cables running from it to a building the President was visiting.
Although Macron and co. appear to have figured out a way of circumventing the power cut problem during their PR tour for now, they have so far been unable to deal with the regular protests plaguing the President’s appearances.
Termed “casserolade” by the country’s media, the protests largely consist of a group of citizens trying to make as much noise as possible in order to highlight their concerns to the president, and his attendant media pack during the local visits.
Although a wide variety of devices and instruments have been used by demonstrators to this effect, the prime weapon of choice for those challenging Macron in recent weeks has been the saucepan and wooden spoon which have now become a bit of a symbol for the anti-government protests after police began confiscating them for being “portable sound devices”.
It is far from the first time pots and pans have been deployed in the country to challenge a ruler, with protesters in the country utilising the cooking utensils in the 19th century in a protest movement that ended up bringing down the country’s King Charles X, and more broadly across Europe as a means to signify social shame for centuries before that. The original name for the casserolade, ‘charivari’, stems from the ancient Greek for ‘headache’, and you can understand why.