In Saintes, Emmanuel Macron’s seduction operation, far from the demonstrators

The pans are still there, the protesters against pension reform Also. Traveling to Saintes (Charente-Maritime) to make announcements on the reform of vocational high schools Emmanuel Macron again rubbed shoulders with a hostile atmosphere on Thursday.

At the call of several unions (CGT, Solidaires) and La France insoumise (LFI), several hundred demonstrators had gathered near the Bernard Palissy high school. The prefecture having banned all demonstrations, they could not approach the establishment, despite an attempt via the railway. Electricity was cut in the school by CGT activists.

In a bubble

The resentment remains strong. “The movement brings together all walks of life and all ages, everywhere in France, it is time for them to ask themselves the right questions. We are fed up with being scorned, ”said 33-year-old Enedis agent Mathilde Canivet to AFP.

Inside the vocational and technological school Bernard Palissy, the atmosphere was not the same. As if placed in a bubble, Emmanuel Macron did not take the sound of pans or boos. From the high school workshop, he presented his measures in favor of the vocational high school, which he wants to make a “national cause”. He then spent a long time with the students, chaining the selfies, before sharing a lunch with them.

keep up the pressure

Since the promulgation of the law on pensions on April 15, the same scenario is repeated however with each trip of the head of state: he is welcomed by opponents who intend to maintain the pressure. The veto, Wednesday evening, of the Constitutional Council to the second attempt at a split-initiative referendum filed by the left to maintain the legal retirement age at 62 does not change anything.

Turning the page on pensions, the stated goal of this period of “100 days” which should take Emmanuel Macron until July 14, promises to be long and complicated. The left and especially LFI are keeping up the pressure by promising that there will be no “return to normal”.

On several occasions since mid-April, Emmanuel Macron has been challenged strongly. There to talk about pensions, here to be indignant at the staggering salaries of certain bosses. He escaped there in Saintes, but those around Emmanuel Macron admit it: these “angers must come out, even harshly”.

“He is right to do so. He puts himself within reach of slaps, he is good at this exercise and there has not yet been a little sentence going wrong, ”said a weighty minister. After Alsace, Hérault, Loir-et-Cher and Jura, Saintes was the fifth stage of this post-retirement tour of France, which looks like a mixture of great post “yellow vests” debate and presidential campaign. “What we are building is a response to the fracture of territories and destinies”, declared Emmanuel Macron in front of the high school students. It remains to be convinced.

Reconquest of the middle cl***es

But this period also worries within the majority, many of whose representatives already have their eyes riveted on the post-100 days period. The fate of the government and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne remains unresolved. “Emmanuel Macron is right to donate his person, but the 100-day period is a response on communication and image, not on substance. The response to the crisis must be a strong political response,” said a Renaissance deputy.

The executive has embarked on an operation to win back the middle cl***es, but its financial room for maneuver is limited. “I make sometimes unpopular reforms for that,” he replied to a high school student asking him how he was going to finance the billion euros promised to vocational high schools. Like what the retirement page is not completely turned.