‘s new prime minister, , had a baptism of fire on Wednesday as he took office on a day of nationwide anti-government protests.
Lecornu, a center-right ally of President who served as defense minister in the previous government, succeeds after losing a confidence vote in the National Assembly.
But he inherits the same challenge of trimming France’s huge deficit, the biggest in the at 5.8% of GDP, while negotiating an utterly divided parliament.
At a handover ceremony in Paris, Lecornu, 39, said his government would need “to be more creative, sometimes more technical, more serious,” in how it works with the opposition – but cautioned that “ruptures will be necessary.”
France: Lecornu facing opposition from right and left
, president of the far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National or RN), the largest single party in parliament, expressed agreement veiled in threat.
“Either there’s a rupture, or there’s a no-confidence motion,” he warned, saying Lecornu, who he met for a controversial dinner last year, is in a “very precarious position.”
RN party leader added: “The President is taking the final shot of Macronism, entrenched with his small circle of loyalists,” and predicted that Macron would soon be forced to call new snap elections to break the deadlock.
On the other side of the National Assembly, the far left said it would seek to topple Lecornu with an immediate no-confidence motion.
The New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire or NFP), a coalition of left-wing parties which was cobbled together to defeat the RN in the second round of last July’s , had demanded that the new prime minister come from within their ranks as the biggest bloc in parliament.
But President Macron took the unusual step of calling Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure on Tuesday to inform him that he would not be appointing a “leftist” as prime minister.
‘Block everything’ protests: police make hundreds of arrests
As Lecornu was getting to work on drafting a new budget which has to be submitted to parliament by October 7, thousands of people took to the streets across France as part of so-called “Bloquons tout” (“Let’s Block Everything”) protests.
Groups of demonstrators repeatedly tried to block Paris’ périphérique ring-road during the morning rush hour and were dispersed by police and tear gas. Elsewhere in the capital, protesters piled up trash cans and hurled objects at police, who reported over 150 arrests throughout the morning.
Another 100 arrests were made elsewhere in France, but the levels of disruption were much lower than expected, with 80,000 police officers deployed across the country.
“We’re governed by robbers,” said Paris protester Aglawen Vega, a nurse and trade union member in a public hospital, who was concerned about the privatization of France’s public services.
“People are suffering, are finding it harder and harder to last out the month, to feed themselves,” she told the Associated Press (AP). “We’re becoming an impoverished nation.”
Down in the southern port city of Marseille, union member Daniel Bretones told Reuters: “Anger has been rumbling for months, even years. We’re on the fifth prime minister of Macron’s second term, and it has never changed anything.”
Road blocks and barricades were also reported in Lille and Caen in the north, Nantes and Rennes in the west, and Lyon in the southeast, while the Department of Education said lessons at around one hundred schools and colleges across the country had been disrupted, with 27 blockaded completely.
“There’s a lot of weariness, shared weariness, a lot of frustration that things aren’t moving forward,” Lila, a Paris office worker, told AP. “That, in part, explains these blockades and this general unhappiness.”
Lecornu: ‘There is no impossible way’
Others, such as Bertrand Rivard, an accountant on his way to a meeting in Paris, criticized the protests. “It’s a bit excessive,” he told AP. “We live in a democracy and the people should not block the country because the government doesn’t take the right decisions.”
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau accused some politicians of backing the protests and of attempting to “create a climate of insurrection in France,” adding that he thought some protesters appeared determined to fight with police.
Despite everything, new Prime Minister Lecornu promised: “We will get there. There is no impossible path.”
Edited by: Louis Oelofse
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