Don't mind the :LIB: link, just one million people came out in Paris today, "hundreds of thousands" my arsecheecks.
It's been a wild couple of days in France, firefighters on strike burning tyres to trigger smoke alarms, electricians turning electric counters back to zero and then resealing them (allegedly cutting power to rich knobheads in the meantime), all ports being closed, and all that was just wildcat action in anticipation of the general stikes for today.
This is all to stop the government from raising the retirement age to 64, from where it is now, 62. Some union heads have murmured that in fact, they want it lowered to 60, as retribution.
Obviously the government has a huge hole in the budget because they want an overinflated army and they think this is a good way to pay for it. I don't even want to start pointing out how dumb of a move this is (the marginal productivity of a 62 year old will not be enough to pay for the fucking army's oil changes)
Honestly these are the biggest strikes that have happened in "the West" within my recollection.
edit: the small conservative Alsacian village I visited recently had their sole Burger King go on strike today so that's how "general" these general strikes are
edit2: oh yeah, some of the strikers were blasting the internationale, which is pretty common for this kind of stuff in France, but still, we love it folks, we love it
This is especially awesome because even the unions feared a radically decreased participation in protests compared to the previous ones on January 19th; instead it was vastly increased. This is likely the largest social movement in France in the last 13 years.
Seeing the movement, even some of Macron's congressmen have expressed doubts in the press about the reform; to the point where :macron: had to let leak suggestions he might dissolve the legislative assembly, likely to reign in his own troops.
In bad country, sham elections are held to give people the illusion of democracy, but the dictator holds absolute power
Oh, that's the least of it. See, for example, article 49.3 of our constitution; I quote:
Article 49 Subsection 3 deals with an administration engagement de responsabilité (commitment of responsibility), which allows the executive branch to force passage of a legislative text unless the opposition introduces a vote de censure (motion of no confidence), which has little chance of passing, since it also entails the dissolution of the legislature pending new elections.
Guess who's been using that one particularly often these last few years ? :macron:
And for the retirement reform, they're digging article 47.1 - which allows to pass a social security budget without a legislative vote after 20 days have passed. Even Macron's congressmen have been making some very pointed remarks about this, because it's basically close to a constitutional exploit. Article on this here if you're curious - in french though.