The President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet on Friday asked politicians, unions, journalists and “ordinary citizens” “to call for calm” after the violence that occurred the day before on the sidelines of demonstrations against pension reform. “Today, all leaders, whether political, whether they are trade unions, whether they are ordinary citizens, whether they are journalists, everyone must call for calm,” he said. MP Renaissance at the microphone of France Bleu Normandie.
“Very strong condemnation” of this violence
“We cannot accept, we cannot condone that this goes through violence of any kind”, she insisted, pointing to the left-wing elected officials whom she called for “a very strong condemnation” of this violence. So far sporadic, the violence made a spectacular entrance on Thursday in the protest on the sidelines of the 9th day of mobilization against the extension of the legal retirement age to 64 at the call of all the unions.
Door of the town hall of Bordeaux set on fire, “scenes of chaos” denounced by the mayor of Rennes, water cannons in Lille and Toulouse, demonstrator with a torn thumb in Rouen, police station targeted in Lorient (Morbihan) … Yaël Braun -Pivet refused to compare this violence to that, symbolic, of a reform adopted without a vote of the National Assembly thanks to 49.3. “The use of procedures that are provided for by the Constitution, for me, in a difficult phase for our country is not something that can be described as ‘disrespect'”, she explained.
“We failed to reach a consensus”
In the footsteps of Emmanuel Macron who criticized the attitude of the unions on Wednesday, she also included the latter in “a collective failure” to “make our compatriots accept a reform which has been accepted throughout the rest of Europe. “. “We have not managed to reach a consensus with the trade union forces, they must take their part, we political forces must take our part, I think the government must take its part too, Parliament must take the hers,” she said.