Green pass France, in the streets against Macron’s measures

Saturday of demonstrations in France against the measures announced last Monday by the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, which provide, from the beginning of August, the health pass in transport (airplanes, buses and trains), to enter restaurants, bars and the obligation vaccination for healthcare personnel. There are numerous appeals to show that they arrived just three days after the parades that took place on July 14, on the occasion of the French national holiday. “We have made an appeal to demonstrate to say no to the health pass”, explains to Adnkronos, Maxime Nicolle, one of the historical faces of the Yellow Vests movement that was launched in France in November 2018. “There are already 153 demonstrations planned. city ​​”, from Paris to Marseille, from Lille to Bordeaux,“ and I’ll be there. It is a movement of citizens tired of being treated like children and tired of too many restrictions on their freedoms. This movement brings together all the popular classes of society, ”explains Nicolle. “The anger in the country is getting deeper and stronger. The yellow vests represented a beginning of something that is growing and expanding. Even professional categories that did not participate in the yellow vest demonstrations are now mobilizing because they have had enough of being taken for morons ”, Nicolle emphasizes. “I’m not an anti vax, I’d be more of a skeptical vaccine in this case. The Covid vaccine is still being tested and contradictory information is being received on the pandemic, ”he explains. “I am personally in favor of vaccinations for people at risk, for the most vulnerable, but I am against this attempt to arouse collective fear. I am 33 years old, I have no medical problems. I don’t wear the mask but I respect the distance ”. “Among the things that annoy the most in the measures announced by Macron is that they want to make vaccines mandatory without making them mandatory, apart from clearly for health personnel who will be obliged to get vaccinated. A category that is already at the end of its strength after months and months of grueling work and that has to cope with difficult working conditions while in recent years over 70,000 hospital beds have been cut by governments ”, underlines Nicolle. “The health personnel – he says – are very angry and there are many who are ready to resign. Many have mobilized. They are tired, many are close to burnout ”. “These measures – he stresses – are an attack on our rights, on the freedom of movement and a violation of our privacy. And it is particularly astonishing that he justifies these measures by speaking of a health issue. This type of measure does not exist for other vaccines. It is dividing the population in two: the vaccinated on one side and the unvaccinated on the other ”. But Macron didn’t just announce measures to tackle the pandemic on Monday. “He has come back to talk about the pension reform, the unemployment insurance reform while in France there are over 10 million people below the poverty line and unemployment is growing. People have fewer and fewer prospects for the future, they are depressed and anger is mounting, ”notes Nicolle. Not only does Covid die, notes Nicolle. “There are people who have committed suicide because they have lost their jobs, because they have suffered a loss of wages. There are depressed people and in particular among young people who have experienced the successful lockdowns badly. Healthcare personnel are on the edge. The anger that had already been deep for several years is growing and politicians continue not to listen. People no longer accept repression during demonstrations and continuous checks ”. This situation that has arisen to face the pandemic, adds Nicolle, “I don’t think it’s just a French specificity. All political systems have had to make good or bad decisions that have had a social impact. And in other countries we could see similar problems to those we are experiencing in France “. The abstention rate in France, around 66%, for the regional elections last June is also a clear sign of the gap between citizens and politicians . “People no longer believe in politics, they no longer believe in politicians, in what they say and what they do. People no longer trust ”. For Nicolle “it is the end of the political system based on representativeness. There is corruption, the French no longer want them. The Minister of Justice is under investigation for conflict of interest, even the Minister of the Interior has been accused ”. Now, according to the exponent of the yellow vests, “we need to move to another system which is that of direct democracy”. It is for this reason, he explains, “that we have proposed citizens’ initiative referendums (Ric) which make it possible to change the Constitution, to repeal laws, to revoke representatives and to draft ordinary laws”. With the current system, however, he points out, “representatives are not obliged to achieve results. Their mandates are not revocable. La République En Marche, the party of President Macron, recorded an insignificant result in the regional teams. It is a party that no longer represents anyone. Instead, Parliament, where it has the majority, can impose its laws and the president can decide on the life of his fellow citizens and decide how he managed to extend the transitional state of health emergency until 31 December 2021. The Health Defense Council in this way it can continue to take decisions without necessarily the endorsement of Parliament ”. “Politicians in France – concludes Nicolle – are disconnected from reality, they are in their technocratic bubble. They don’t understand people’s everyday problems. I think that if politics does not listen again, it will end badly because when people have nothing left to lose, anger risks being difficult to appease. In perspective either politics and the government will admit its mistakes and initiate a transition to change the system or the anger will explode. Violent repression will probably lead to an equally violent reaction ”.