My aim here is to give you a taste of the mood and events surrounding the fragile rise of President Emmanuel Macron before the riots.
It was as Deputy Secretary General to the President of the Socialist Party that Emmanuel Macron started to gain visibility with the public. The right had been thoroughly discredited with corruption scandals and the French had demanded change. Their hopes were quickly dashed.
The one promise that Francois Holland was determined to put before parliament was Christiane Taubira’s law of marriage for all (equal rights to marriage and adoption). The public seemed in favor and it looked like an easy win. However, political ideas were now being fought out as cultural wars on facebook and other social media. In no time at all a huge movement called La Manif Pour Tous was organizing protests across the country. Night after night the country was torn apart on current event talk shows. Hate crimes spiked. It was a terrifying time for a lot of gay people.
In this atmosphere Macron began to appreciate the difficulties and restraints of working government. He portrayed himself as a reformist proposing socialist values with conservative economics, ardently pro the Republic, pro Europe and pro the environment.
At a time when France had rejected the right and was now looking at the failure of the left, he began to appeal to small and large business leaders alike. In 2016 there had been riots in Paris opposing Labor Law Reforms.
According to unions, around 1.2 million people turned out to protest across the country on March 31, with 160,000 people protesting in Paris. Police gave lower figures, saying 390,000 people joined the protests across France. The Police force was violently attacked and went on strike themselves, demanding more resources. Whilst protesting, they were attacked again.
With open hostility to all forms of authority, what would be the mood of the nation for the upcoming elections?
For decades the French had switched between the traditional parties of the left and right.
The temperature of public opinion towards the political class was as bad as it had been in 50 years. The majority of the public had lost all confidence in the established political parties. The far right were on the rise again now that Marine le Pen was re-branding the party as less extreme and more appealing to previously socialist workers and women in particular.
Few expected a relative unknown like Emmanuel Macron, a man who had worked in banking for Rothchild & co, to become President of the Republic.
The danger of the far right winning was elevated by the number of people calling for a blank vote or a vote for a fringe parties to send a message.
Macron had yet to form a political party but, after quitting the PS, led a movement called En Marche to test the French public’s response to full reform of the French economic structure. It was bold and risky but Macron had his convictions. Whilst the media loved him and his charm, the public response was mixed to tepid.
There was a high level of mistrust, but business was encouraged as the current regulations made it very unfavorable for them to expand and take on new employees. Unemployment was around 10% and President Francois Holland had decided not to run for a second term having failed to turn this around.
The 2017 National elections were nail-biting. Macron scraped through to the second round to run off against the openly fascist Front Nationalist party. The far left supporters of Melenchon were outraged, and threatened violent rebuttals.
In April 2017 during the election, there was an eruption of emotion at the site of an American Whirlpool factory that after many years was due to relocate to Poland. Everyone was going to lose their job. What would Macron and le Pen have to offer these people who demanded government intervention? Macron went to the factory in Amiens to speak to the union leaders. He had to get past a howling and whistling crowd of Marine le Pen supporters. Against the advice of union leaders, he went down to the workers in the parking lot to address their anger and to try to talk to them.
Moi, je ne suis pas venu pour faire des selfies, mais pour trouver des solutions.
I am not here to take selfies, I am here to find solutions. He was blunt with them though, saying that he cannot force Whirlpool to stay in France as no more big companies would risk setting up here. He insisted that there was no easy solution. When Marine le pen promised to save them all if elected, they saw the lie and calmed down their anti-Macron anger.
In his famous 2017 Debate with Marine le Pen he was able to expose her dubious financing by a Russian bank and her Trump-like childish lack of knowledge and unsuitability for office.
It is true to say that while Macron had his supporters, part of the vote was anti- Marine le Pen.
He was voted in on May 7th 2017. Now he needed to form a new political party. With the LRM (La République en Marche) he appealed to progressives from all parties with an aim of presenting a government that was to look more like the people with a balance of experienced politicians and people with skills outside of politics. Women and minorities were especially welcomed. Though, the top ranks of the party are still white men.
Keen to make a fresh start, he invited the unions to discuss openly the reforms that he wished to put forward.
The leader of the CGT, Philippe Martinez (pictured below) was cooperative, but cautioned that the time frame was unrealistic.
The French private sector was shown to have grown at the fastest pace in six years with companies mentioning Mr Macron's election as a reason for optimism.
However, Serge Raffy of the Nouvel Obs smelled trouble ahead. "At the slightest spark or faux-pas, (Macron) could find himself with millions of French in the streets”.
Macron was still adored by the media who splashed news and photos of him and Brigitte across the front pages. For a while it was all good until he had a few disastrous encounters with members of the public.
In France it is possible for regular citizens to sometimes encounter and engage publicly with the President. Often they have a point to put across and are not really expecting a constructive discussion. They get upset and insult him and he gets frustrated.
On one such occasion he was challenged by a unionist about the rate of unemployment. Macron suggested that the unions stop blocking France and let people get to work. He was told that it is fine for him in his nice car and expensive suit, but what about the ordinary person in the street? Macron suggested he get a suit because that might help him get a job! It went viral and since then there have been more errors of communication.
A year after Hurricane Irma, President Emmanuel Macron returned to St. Martin in the Caribbean to see how the island was coping with the recovery. He met with some young people, one of whom had been in prison for a bank robbery. Again the pictures went viral with Marine le Pen being among the most indignant.
To his credit, Macron came back with a strong defense. He denounced the racist undertones and affirmed that he was there for all of the Republics children.
"What made me fight to be elected against Marine Le Pen and why I am here for today is because I love every child of the Republic, whoever they are. This is nonsense, a child of the Republic does not choose the place where they are born. I am President of the French Republic and I will not leave the people to anyone, " he continued before explaining that the two young men had helped a disabled girl to move around to meet him. "They were able to do that because I looked at them with confidence, I respected them, that is the republic […] There is nothing to learn from hate speech".
My piece here is only a flavor and there is a vast amount of information available for all tastes. Macron is anything from Satan to a savior depending on what you chose to read. What is true is that he hasn’t had two years yet and I can assure you that he is anti-Trump, having tackled him directly on climate change, immigration and the European Union.
Now we have riots and uncertainty again.