As France was commemorating the end of the second world war in Europe this month, Emmanuel Macron cut an isolated figure on a near-empty Champs-Elysées, surrounded by steel security barriers to prevent any member of the public from getting within shouting, let alone pot-banging, distance.
For the first time, and by police order the French people were barrred from a large area ringing the official 8 May remembrance of the liberation. Six years after his first presidential victory and a year after winning a second term in the Elysée, Macron can scarcely show his face in public without being booed, heckled or insulted.
Our youngest-ever president – who once embodied hope, triumphantly defeated the far right and claimed to have broken the political mould by rising above traditional divides – has gone from being admired to being despised. Macron’s decision to push through an increase in the state pension age from 62 to 64, despite a huge groundswell of opposition, has created unprecedented levels of anger across the country – most of it directed at the president himself. » | Rokhaya Diallo | Thursday, May 18, 2023
