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Yellow Vests #46 after winning end to austerity budgets

Ramin Mazaheri
Press TV, Paris

 

Yellow Vests marched for the 46th consecutive weekend across France amid continued bans on protests by President Emmanuel Macron.

Despite the anti-government movement’s persistence, this month the first major poll on the Yellow Vests was issued since March. It showed that the country is almost perfectly divided in half on the Yellow Vests, but there are clear class divisions: professionals and executives want the protests to stop, while workers and rural citizens support the social movement.

Far from being finished, 40% think the movement will regain its former intensity, and that could be sparked by recent extraordinary news. The Yellow Vests were credited with a historic victory this week, ending French austerity. Macron was forced to call off a 10th consecutive austerity budget which he feared would create more social unrest.

Since late March, the Macron administration has encouraged shocking police brutality and ordered major judicial harassment of protesters, which caused an immediate plunge in the numbers of the Yellow Vests.

Macron may have called off more increased taxes on households, cuts to government services and tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but austerity is not really finished. This month, he moved forward with a vastly unpopular plan to raise the retirement age and make a right-wing overhaul of the pension system, which is provoking strikes, demonstrations and resistance from unions as well as Yellow Vests.


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