March 21 () –
The protests and riots that took place in France on Monday, coinciding with the voting of two motions of no confidence against the Government in the National Assembly, ended with almost 300 arrests, 234 of them only in Paris, where some of the worst riots were recorded. .
The emergency services also carried out some 240 interventions to put out fires, mostly in litter bins, according to sources cited by Franceinfo. In addition, eleven members of the security forces were injured in clashes with protesters, indicates the BFMTV network.
The protests were the culmination of a day dominated by political tension, after the Government forced the approval of the controversial pension reform at the cost of being subjected to two motions of censure, one of which ended with just nine votes. of difference between the supporters and detractors of the Executive.
The key to this vote was in the division of the vote within Los Republicanos, the main party of the traditional right. Despite the fact that the leadership of this formation advocated not supporting the motions, 19 deputies left the official line to position themselves with the rest of the opposition.
For the Republican leader, Olivier Marleix, this figure “was not entirely a surprise”, despite the fact that such a level of support for the motion was not expected. “They were those who were against the pension reform”, he tried to justify this Tuesday in an interview on BFMTV.
Former President François Hollande, a socialist, has suggested to the current president, Emmanuel Macron, that it is time to “calm down” and wait for the review of the reform to be carried out by the Constitutional Council, on which the definitive political endorsement of a law that has generated a cascade of protests and strikes since January.
Hollande, however, has warned in LCI that the current situation derives from “a succession of errors”, among other reasons because he considers that “it was not the time to propose the reform”, with rising inflation and a marked global context for the Ukrainian war.
