Itching to speak to Emmanuel Macron behind a security cordon in the village of Ganges, southern France, Noah, an 11-year-old schoolboy, said he had one message for the beleaguered French president, reports The Telegraph.
“I’m going to tell him to resign. His pension reform is rubbish,” he exclaimed as Mr Macron prepared to visit the school to offer teachers a pay rise.
A year after the centrist 45-year-old comfortably won a second five-year term, this was hardly a welcome fit for France’s “Republican monarch”, as his detractors are fond of calling him.
The animosity against France’s youngest leader since Napoleon has now even permeated to the pre-teens. But Elysée insiders say they are far from the only ones clamouring to have it out with the French leader.
After three months of nationwide mass protests, fury against Mr Macron’s decision to ram a bill through Parliament to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 without a vote and swiftly sign it into law has reached fever pitch.
In a national address last week, Mr Macron promised “100 days of appeasement, unity, ambition and action in the service of France” in the hope that public anger subsides in time for Bastille Day on July 14.