2023-07-04 01:01:38
by Stefano Montefiori
At noon, mobilization in front of town halls across the country. Detentions are decreasing, but 45,000 agents remain deployed to monitor the streets after the clashes of recent days
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS – France is rallying around its mayors, defending the values of the Republic in a territory never so threatened by a part of its own inhabitants. Yesterday at noon, mobilization in front of town halls across the country, especially in L’Ha-les-Roses, just south of Paris, where thousands of people showed solidarity with one of the protagonists of these days: Vincent Jeanbrun, born 39 ago in the town whose mayor, who two nights ago was defending his town hall when the thugs threw a burning car into the house where his wife and two children, aged 5 and 7, slept. Among the broken windows of the shops and the wrecks of burnt cars, Jeanbrun has launched an appeal to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Together we will get the better of them. If everyone plays his part, we will have a chance to get our country back on its feet.
And today 220 mayors will be received at the Elysée by President Macron. Mayors are the best connoisseurs of their fellow citizens, they say in the president’s entourage. The idea of having an exchange with them, of listening to their diagnosis of the origins of this protest. Then we’ll get together to work on solutions.
The accidents are decreasing, the most violent phase of the revolt may have passed, but President Emmanuel Macron has decided to keep the safety device of the most difficult nights intact. Still 45,000 policemen and gendarmes deployed on the streets of France with armored vehicles and special Raid and Gign departments to ensure a gradual response to the crisis: in the meantime, restore order and calm, then think about a medium-long term response. Without ever giving in, the president’s entourage underlined, to the agitation of those on the extreme right who were calling for the proclamation of a state of emergency.
At the Elysée it is underlined that this was not a revolt of the banlieues: The people who live in the banlieues are furious because they aspire, like everyone else, to live in calm and peace and have seen their cars burned, their supermarkets and local shops burned or looted. And then the banlieues have achieved a lot in the last 30 years in terms of urban regeneration, funding for associations, education and access to culture. They have by no means been abandoned, as some would have you believe.
The revolt was then more serious, the rift was more profound, and therefore more complicated to heal, because the problems are no longer linked to the degraded suburbs as in 2005 but have extended to the whole country and not only for economic reasons.
A week after the start of the revolt, an initial balance indicates a total of 3,400 arrests, 684 wounded police and firefighters, 5,000 vehicles set on fire, nearly a thousand buildings burned, damaged or looted, 250 police stations and gendarmerie attacked. More serious figures than the revolt in the banlieues of 2005, which lasted three weeks. And Geoffroy Roux de Bzieux, who is preparing to leave the leadership of Medef (the French Confindustria), evokes the figure of one billion in damages to companies.
For Macron, after the revolt of the yellow vests, the economic emergency linked to Covid, the accidents and strikes against the pension reform, this is yet another extraordinary crisis, which risks making him lose international weight (after the visit of King Charles III in Paris, also had to cancel his trip to Berlin). In the background, the fear for the Paris 2024 Games, which suddenly seem very close and whose safety must be guaranteed.
July 3, 2023 (change July 3, 2023 | 23:31)
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