The telephone also rings, at the same time, at the editorial office of the departmental daily, “L’Éveil de Haute-Loire”. This time, it is a craftsman from Puy-en-Velay, yellow vest also, who balances the information, photo in support: “Macron has just landed in Loudes! “. “We couldn’t believe it,” says editor-in-chief Christophe Darne. The Élysée had however demanded the greatest secrecy from the prefect Yves Rousset, when a collaborator of the president had called him the evening before: “total silence! “.
No escort for the president
Gendarmes and firefighters met on Tuesday around 4 p.m. at the prefecture, without being told why. As a result, Emmanuel Macron will travel from the airport to the city without a local escort, protected only by his own agents. And of course, nothing will go as planned.
“Die! “, launch two young girls, barely twenty years old, to the president whose relatives will then report that this is what shocked him the most
In the partly devastated prefecture, whose walls are still blackened by the fire, the president listens to the testimonies of staff members still traumatized by what they have experienced. We light up with a flashlight, it smells burnt. A woman tells how she went to the grill to try a dialogue with these people she knew and who replied that she was going to “grill like a chicken”.
The president goes back to his car to leave the prefecture, and it is then that everything almost goes wrong, that everything could have gone wrong. About twenty yellow vests have gathered in front of the gates or what is left of them, but Macron has spotted two other people who are applauding him. By the time he lowers his window to greet them, he is within reach of insults and these fly very low.
The procession goes around the square, which the demonstrators cross running, and stops at the red light. It is there that a man throws himself on a vehicle of the procession. A policeman comes out of the following car, ready to draw. “Die! “Tell two young girls, barely twenty years old, to the president, all of whom will later report that this is what shocked him the most. He would never have thought he was the object of such hatred.
He had to come, but not in loucedé. It was clumsy!
Emmanuel Macron is not at the end of his troubles. He goes to the gendarmerie, a few hundred meters further, to listen, for an hour and a half, to the testimonies of police and gendarmes who tell him what they endured three days earlier. A trade unionist in tears confides to him: “for the first time, I had the impression that they wanted me dead”. During this time, the yellow vests have come closer, there are now more than a hundred who bang on the windows and redouble their insults.
The head of state must leave the gendarmerie behind. In the car taking him back to the airport there is a heavy silence. For once, Emmanuel Macron leaves his cell phone, makes no phone calls, sends no texts. From time to time, he recalls, still shaken, the testimonies he has just heard. “It was a real break for him,” says Sibeth N’Diaye, who was his communications advisor at the time. No doubt he does not see these yellow vests trying to pursue him to his plane, forcing the procession to make a slight detour and the aircraft to take off hastily. “They left like thieves,” rejoices Jérôme Batret. I guarantee you that it was not quiet until the airport. »
A sense of improvisation
Was Emmanuel Macron right to make this whirlwind visit to Puy-en-Velay? There is no doubt for the prefect Rousset: “I was happy that he came, he confides, three years after the fact. This reassured me: the representative of the State was not isolated, he had received the support of his boss. “” He had to come, nuance this journalist of “Progrès” who lived these events closely, but not in loucedé. It was clumsy! Here everyone knows each other, so it spread very quickly, and people took it for an insult. “Starting with elected officials (see box). ” The elected ? resumes Yves Rousset. But they are almost all close to Wauquiez! If we had warned them, it is not 30 people who would have waited for the president at the exit of the prefecture, but 500 or 1000! »
For local observers, however, this visit was a matter of total improvisation. “We had an impression of amateurism, including in the security service”, testifies a journalist from “L’Éveil”. As for communication, as often at the time, it proved to be faulty. The Élysée refuses to give photos. As a result, “we only have the clichés of a President of the Republic fleeing under the invectives”.