analyse
French President Macron is touring his country in an attempt to talk to citizens after the dispute over pension reform. But is Macron still listening? Many French doubt that.
The sound makes the music, also in politics. In the communication between Emmanuel Macron and the people of France, this tone is quite shrill.
In Sélestat in Alsace, the President is received with cooking pot concerts and boos. A few days after his televised speech last Monday, Macron went on tour; wants to show that he doesn’t avoid anger.
However, there is no trace of humility – Macron even goes one better verbally: “Beating on cooking pots will not bring the country any further! But we could do something for the cooking pot industry, because it also produces too little!”
The protest against the president also became very loud during Macron’s TV speech on pension reform – and that’s how he was received in many places on his trip through the country.
The fire continues to fan
Spicy remarks and tongue-in-cheek comments: The President wants to appease and demonstrate that he is listening. But in the end he just keeps provoking.
Noise and cooking pots are not arguments for him, says Macron. What resonates with many people is that he just doesn’t take them seriously. The President and the French are just talking past each other. Macron claims that he is always ready to listen to the opposition, that he wants to convince:
But you can only convince those who listen. When people come not to listen, you have to let them not listen for a moment and then move on.
All extremists
One can read from many of Macron’s statements that he sees the protests as a kind of episode that he simply has to sit out.
Although he admitted in his television speech a week ago that he too could not “turn a deaf ear to the demands for more social justice. Not even those for a renewal of our democracy, which young people in particular demand.” The answer, however, could be neither stagnation nor extremism.
According to Macron, however, those who no longer see the dispute over pension reform as just a social crisis, but a democratic crisis, are already “extreme”.
The president and government have exhausted everything the constitution allows to push through the reform after the parliamentary process. This is legally possible without question, but from the point of view of many people it is democratically questionable.
Increasingly in the “basta” tone
Macron brushes aside this argument with harsh words. You know the argument that it is “the argument of political extremes”. Some would probably not have gotten over the fact that they lost the presidential election.
And those who protest against him by hitting the pot, he instructed by pointing out that democracy means “having a project, talking about it openly and then implementing it”..
When criticizing the “pension reform” project, Macron often reacts in a snappy “Basta” tone. In a television interview at the end of March, he emphasized that no one should think that he was enjoying this reform. Perhaps he could have “swept the problems under the carpet, like many of my predecessors”. However, there is no way to financially balance the pension system, which is why this reform is necessary.
A majority considers him “authoritarian”
Macron’s approach to pension reform and the tone of many statements have consequences. According to a recent survey by the opinion research institute Ifop, almost 70 percent of those surveyed consider Macron to be “authoritarian”, and only 17 percent believe that he can rally people behind him.
With his tour of the country, Macron is trying to correct this image. The fact that he is finding it difficult to do so at the moment is also due to how he talks to people.
The sound makes the music. And the president just doesn’t hit that tone at the moment.