With France in Uproar Over Pensions, Macron May Need One Early
By Adam Nossiter
With his country in turmoil, more chaos looming and no resolution in sight, President Emmanuel Macron of France tried changing the subject.
Last Thursday, nearly a million people had taken to the streets to protest his plan to remake France’s uniquely generous pension system. But a day later, Mr. Macron, instead of addressing what was on everyone’s minds — how to get out of the standoff, which has stranded thousands of commuters — delivered a lyrical tribute far from Paris to three rescue workers killed in a helicopter crash.
That Olympian silence on the immediate issue of the day encapsulated Mr. Macron’s challenge as a reformer, past, present and future, in the view of some analysts.
The French president sold himself to voters as a nonpolitician, but that credential has come back to haunt him. His own party criticizes what many call his maladroit communication on an anxiety-inducing subject.
Now, some within the party are predicting a rough road ahead for the man who promised his country a “revolution” in a campaign manifesto of that name. His citizens turned out to have a revolution of their own in mind — one that, like so many in France’s past, is bubbling up from the streets.
Read more @NY Times
