Slippage or political strategy?

In an interview with the Parisian, Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday January 4 that he wanted to "piss off" the unvaccinated while the deputies pushed back to 16 years, against 12 previously, the threshold required for the vaccination pass, in order to appease debates engaged in an electric atmosphere.

"The unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And so we will continue to do it, until the end. That's the strategy," he said in an interview with the Parisian.

To a question from a reader of Le Parisien stressing that the unvaccinated "occupy 85% of resuscitations", which leads to a postponement of operations, Emmanuel Macron replies that this remark "is the best argument" for the government's strategy and that, "in a democracy, the worst enemy is lies and stupidity".

"You won't be able to take a cannon anymore"

"Almost all of the people, more than 90%, have adhered" to the vaccination and "it is a very small minority that is resistant", he adds. 

"That one, how do we reduce it? We reduce it, sorry to say it, like that, by pissing him off even more. Me, I'm not for pissing off the French. I plague all day against the administration when it blocks them. Well there, the unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off, "he continues.

>> To read: Debate on the vaccine pass: MPs privileged target of antivax violence

"I am not going to put them in prison, I am not going to forcibly vaccinate them. And so, we must tell them: from January 15, you will no longer be able to go to the restaurant, you will no longer be able to take a cannon, you You will no longer be able to go for a coffee, you will no longer be able to go to the theater, you will no longer be able to go to the movies ... ", explains the Head of State.

He was speaking while the deputies had resumed the debate on the vaccine pass in an electric atmosphere after the surprise vote refusing the continuation of the debates on the night of Monday to Tuesday.

Indignation of the opposition

The LFI presidential candidate and deputy Jean-Luc Mélenchon was one of the first officials to react to the interview at Le Parisien.

"Does the President control what he says? The WHO says" convince rather than coerce ". And him?" Piss off more ". Appalling," he denounces in a tweet.

For Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the RN, "a President should not say that. The guarantor of the unity of the nation persists in dividing it and assumes wanting to make the unvaccinated second-class citizens. Emmanuel Macron is unworthy of his office ".

"President, I will stop pissing off the French. The outgoing President, he speaks openly of pissing off a category of French," also immediately tweeted the other far-right candidate, Eric Zemmour.

At LR, Bruno Retailleau estimated that no "health emergency justifies such words. Emmanuel Macron says he has learned to love the French, he especially likes to despise them. We can encourage vaccination without insulting anyone or pushing for radicalization" , he said.

With AFP

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