(Foreign Policy)
By Robert Zaretsky January 15, 2019, 4:10 PM
French President Emmanuel Macron is desperately seeking a consistent and credible answer to a question that refuses to stand still. When the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement started this past November, Macron’s government treated it as a one-off protest that could be ignored. By December, the president decided that the continued weekly demonstrations were a threat to his policy goals. Macron’s response was to deliver a national address in which he announced an altered agenda, including economic concessions such as annulling the gas tax increase and raising the minimum wage.
The compromises weren’t enough to end the protests. This weekend, for the ninth consecutive Saturday, the protest movement took center stage, mobilizing over 80,000 demonstrators across the country. The principal stages were Paris and Bourges, the latter chosen for its symbolic significance as roughly the geographical center of France. Though the demonstrations were mostly peaceful, there were once again eruptions of the nearly ritualistic acts of violence on the part of some protesters, and the equally ritualistic reaction of police and security forces.
It’s increasingly clear that the protest movement isn’t simply a political challenge but a fundamental crisis of legitimacy for Macron and France’s Fifth Republic. The protesters now imply that their objections are aimed not at the government’s decisions but at the style of democracy represented by the constitutional order. And, worryingly, the persistence of the demonstrations reflects a persistence of public support. While there has been a decline in enthusiasm, most French still back the gilets jaunes. In a study released last week by the French Institute of Public Opinion, those who either support or sympathize—two very different categories—fell from 71 percent in early November to 57 percent in early January. The overarching goal of these remaining supporters was summed up by the signs recently carried by gilets jaunes protesters in the French Alps: “End the dictatorship.”
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