Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced on Tuesday the police force planned in France and in the capital for Thursday, another big day of mobilization against the pension reform. A total of 12,000 police and gendarmes will be mobilized Thursday throughout France, including 5,000 in Paris, announced the minister, who came to provide “support” to members of the police. “That is to say an unprecedented number of police and gendarmes as part of the pension reform,” said the minister during a press briefing.
The ninth day of inter-union mobilization promises to be animated, while two motions of censure were rejected Monday in the Assembly, ratifying the final adoption of the pension reform. Wild gatherings, formed Monday evening in several cities in France after the announcement of these rejections, sometimes degenerated leading to clashes with the police.
The Minister of the Interior mentioned these 1,200 undeclared demonstrations on Tuesday: “Throwing molotov cocktails – as was the case in Albi, Dijon and in several sub-prefectures -, ransacking town halls – that was the case in Lyon – to attack dozens and dozens of offices of parliamentarians, headquarters of political parties, to attack directly the homes of women and men who are elected, it is absolutely unacceptable (…) it has nothing to do with the pension reform,” said the minister, adding that the police would be deployed to “guarantee the freedom to demonstrate”. “No to disorder, to messing up,” he added.
The “provocations of the far left”
While the left-wing opposition called for continuing the fight in the streets, the Minister of the Interior asked the police on Tuesday “not to respond to provocations from the far left” which, according to him , seeks “to destabilize the state”. The leader of the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon notably called on Monday evening to “pass to popular censorship” of the text.
The unions of several sectors have for their part called to strike Thursday, in particular in transport and in schools. While the RATP announces very disrupted traffic on the RER and metro networks of the capital, the teacher union FSU-SNUIpp Paris indicated on Twitter that 70% of Parisian teachers intended to strike.