France has started this Tuesday a new day of strikes and demonstrations against the pension reform promoted by the government, without major incidents but with complications in transportation and blockades in hundreds of schools.
Once again, the big unions have united their voices to try to repeat the success of January 19. The Government has mobilized 11,000 gendarmes and police -a thousand more than on the first day of strikes- in anticipation of the more than 200 rallies called in the main cities of the country.
The unions are protesting against a reform which, among other measures, contemplates raising the retirement age to 64. Workers’ associations consider it unfair, while for the Executive and the President, Emmanuel Macron, they are necessary changes that, in reality, are late within the European framework.
«If the government does not change, there will be consequences,» warned the secretary general of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Philippe Martinez, in an interview with the BFM TV channel. Martinez, who accused Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne of using a «provocative» tone by ruling out changes to the main axes of the reform.
Martinez does not rule out a third day of protests, while waiting to see how Tuesday’s protests evolve, with Paris as the main focus. The authorities are expecting between 1 and 1.2 million demonstrators in total, according to a confidential report picked up by Franceinfo.
OPPOSITION CRITICISMS The reform does not please the political opposition either, to the right and left of Macron. The former presidential candidate of La France Insoumise (LFI) Jean-Luc Mélenchon has stressed on Twitter that this Tuesday «is not a normal day», but represents the drive of a citizenry that «defends its right to a human existence against the caste and its government».
For the mayor of Paris, the Socialist Anne Hidalgo, the changes in the pension system anticipate «an unjust and brutal regression». «Faced with the systematic destruction of our social conquests, we will never resign ourselves,» proclaimed Hidalgo, who closed the City Hall as a sign of «solidarity.»
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
