The protests and riots that took place on Monday in France, coinciding with the votes on two motions of censure against the government in the National Assembly, ended with nearly 300 arrests, 234 of them in Paris alone, where some of the worst altercations were recorded.
The emergency services also carried out some 240 interventions to put out fires, mostly involving litter garbage cans, according to sources quoted by Franceinfo. In addition, eleven members of the security forces were injured in clashes with demonstrators, reports BFMTV.
The protests were the culmination of a day dominated by political tension, after the Government forced the approval of the controversial pension reform at the cost of being subjected to two motions of censure, one of which resulted in a difference of only nine votes between supporters and opponents of the Executive.
The key to this vote was the division of votes within the Republicans, the main party of the traditional right. Despite the fact that the leadership of this party advocated not to support the motions, 19 deputies went out of the official line to position themselves with the rest of the opposition.
For the head of the Republican ranks, Olivier Marleix, this figure »was not entirely a surprise», even though such a level of support for the motion was not expected. »They were those who were against the pension reform,» he has tried to justify this Tuesday in an interview on BFMTV.
Former President François Hollande, a Socialist, has suggested to the current president, Emmanuel Macron, that it is time to »calm down» and wait for the examination of the reform to be carried out by the Constitutional Council, on which depends the final political endorsement of a law that has generated a cascade of protests and strikes since January.
Hollande, however, has warned in LCI that the current situation derives from »a succession of errors», among other reasons because he considers that »it was not the time to propose the reform», with inflation on the rise and a global context marked by the war in Ukraine.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
