“It is time for the government to hear the anger of medium-sized cities”

SSaturday, February 11, a new category of demonstrators marched all over France: “first-time demonstrators”. Many lived not in Paris, but in medium-sized cities, these centers of centrality. They live in sub-prefectural cities (France has 235 of them), in towns, these beautiful cities that are too often forgotten by the central power. France so close and so far from the big cities.

Why did these “primo-protesters” (craftsmen, traders, employees, etc.) decide to take the plunge and make their opposition to the government pension reform a reality? Because the inhabitants of these medium-sized towns are the first to be penalized by the economic, political and international context and therefore by the reform project which is part of a sacrificial symbolism of the middle classes. And which also questions the social contract of the IV^e and V^e Republic.

The inhabitants of these cities do not feel discredited, but not considered by the government and more generally by public decision-makers. These are the Republican-minded voters who are called upon in each second round of the presidential election. To forget them immediately. The impact of inflation is stronger in these sub-prefectural cities – and inter-municipalities or living areas – than in the large metropolises (through the subject of transport, for example).

The Republic is no longer one and indivisible

Many of them have suffered the brunt of globalization, and therefore deindustrialization. Town centers, villages and towns have gradually seen their traders, their doctors, their businesses and their young people leave. They have already suffered for years from the desertification of public services, forcing them to go to the cities to have access, for example, to a specialist doctor.

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Today, like all French people, the government is asking them to make extra efforts by working longer for the same standard of living. But mid-sized towns are scolding because they feel like they’re paying as much (or even more), but for less services. And also for less listening, less consideration than the inhabitants of big cities.

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Inequalities in terms of access to public services do not disappear with retirement or the postponement of the retirement age which, on the contrary, reinforces them and reinforces this strong feeling of injustice. The Republic is no longer one and indivisible, contrary to article 1^is of the French Constitution. A game of mistrust is established between Paris and these cities, between the government and the 235 sub-prefectural cities.

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