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“What’s the point of voting?”: several thousand people demonstrated from Paris to Marseille to denounce the “Macron-Barnier government”, at the call of France Insoumise, environmentalists and feminist, student and environmental associations. Around sixty rallies were announced in France, according to the LFI website, at the time when Michel Barnier, appointed Prime Minister by Emmanuel Macron, is finalizing the composition of a government that is a priori very right-wing, more than two months after legislative elections won without an absolute majority by the left-wing coalition.
But the calls were poorly followed in the regions: there were 2,200 in Marseille, according to the police headquarters (compared to 3,500 during the previous day of protest on September 7), 400 in Bordeaux, some 200 in Angoulême and Nantes, a hundred in Strasbourg… In Paris, the figures were not yet available.
“That’s not what people voted for”
LFI aimed to “increase popular pressure” after the September 7 demonstration, which brought together between 110,000 left-wing demonstrators across France, according to the authorities, and 300,000, according to the organizers. “I’m here because it doesn’t correspond to what we voted for. The Prime Minister represents a party that got almost nothing in the elections. I’m worried and angry: what’s the point of voting?”, a demonstrator, Violette Bourguignon, 21, a film student, told AFP when she was interviewed at the start of the Paris demonstration on Place de la Bastille.
François Vermorel, a Green Party activist, “came to denounce the democratic coup decided by Macron, which deserves a response in the streets”. He particularly fears the arrival at the Ministry of the Interior of Bruno Retailleau, whom he accuses of “racism” and “homophobia”. “That’s not what people voted for in June”, he says. In addition to LFI, whose leader Mathilde Panot marched in the capital, the organisations behind this call are student unions (Union étudiante and Union syndicale et lycéenne), environmental NGOs (Greenpeace) and feminists (Planning familial, Collectif droits des femmes, Nous toutes) and the anti-globalisation association Attac.
“We will not let Barnier do it”
The flags visible in the procession were overwhelmingly those of political parties. Highly anticipated in Marseille, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was cheered by dozens of young supporters of La France Insoumise, who came to swell the ranks of the procession near the Saint-Charles train station, before the leader of the movement responded to the media.
“I feel like we’re handing France over to the RN for the next elections,” asserts Fanny Przibilowski, 45, who came to demonstrate “because the French democratic system is completely flouted.” In Lille, the demonstrators walked around, placards in hand: “We will not let Barnier take us over,” “Macron impeachment,” one could read.
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