France’s main leftwing party, along with the hardline CGT trade union and some 80 other organizations on Saturday led several thousand people in street protests across the country against President Emmanuel Macron’s reforms of the public sector, reports Reuters
Organizers hoped that the protests would grow further into a groundswell of opposition to Macron’s reform of France’s public service and some state enterprises such as the heavily indebted national railway company SNCF.
Union officials and the police gave widely different figures for the turnout. CGT said 80,000 people participated in the protest in Paris, and 250,000 came out nationwide. The police, however, said the protest drew 21,000 in Paris.
The turnout was lower than the 320,000 during a previous nationwide protest in March.
“We are going to carry a message [and] this message must be heard by the strong-headed Emmanuel Macron,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radical-left France Unbowed party, told a cheering crowd in the southern port city of Marseille.
Mélenchon listed a number of grievances including staff shortages at hospitals, limited admissions at universities, and lack of police in tough neighborhoods, because the government says it does not have the means to fund them.
“We do not believe you because you are lying,” Mélenchon said, adding that Macron’s government had given a 4.5 billion euros ($5.25 billion) tax break to the rich which could have been invested in hospitals.
“The country is rich. The country must share,” Melenchon said.
French interior minister Gérard Collomb said that police intervened in Paris after a group of hooded protesters tried to destroy a bank.