Pension reform: the left hopes to “shake the walls of the Elysée” on Thursday

Alexis Delafontaine with AFP 12:07 p.m., January 18, 2023, modified at 12:08 p.m., January 18, 2023

In a meeting at the Japy gymnasium in Paris on Tuesday evening, "the united left" of Nupes called "to shake the walls of the Elysée on Thursday", a day of union mobilization against the government's pension reform project.

In the midst of the flags of their Nupes alliance, the communist, rebellious, socialist and environmentalist representatives walked up the central aisle together with a smile on their lips, in a great clamor from the militants present in this historic place of left-wing rallies.

"It's nice, it's something you don't see so often", notes Nicolas G., communist activist, who underlines that this first official meeting of the Nupes against the pension reform is "a necessity because it is an emergency" in the face of "destructive reform".

"The left of all colors must come together to stand up, with the unions", adds this 64-year-old teacher, who says he has to "do two more years to have all (his) quarters" for retirement.

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Two days before a first day of mobilization at the call of all the unions, the watchword was for mobilization and "not to be fooled" by the government's speeches.

Welcoming the union unity around this fight, the boss of the PCF Fabien Roussel stressed that "this unity obliges us too".

"It's next Thursday that the walls of the Elysée must shake", he asserted, "it's next Thursday that we must be the force and the number".

"If you are so numerous this evening, it is because you have not understood that this reform is for our good", quipped the leader of the LFI deputies Mathilde Panot, while the government has begun a process of pedagogy to explain its reform.

"Don't believe them! From this gymnasium we tell the government that no one is fooled", and that "it is a political choice to make millions of people suffer by making them work longer", she said. declared.

"Bolsheviks"

Monique Brun, 80-year-old communist activist, who came as a neighbor, is delighted "that we are together", even if she breathes laughingly that she would have "preferred to see Mélenchon" whom she finds "brilliant".

"This political diversity, it helps to raise people's awareness and we really need it," she adds, coming to "listen to the arguments".

On stage, the first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure is enthusiastic: "The left is beautiful when it comes together to change the lives of the French".

In the front row, his rival Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, who will try Thursday to steal the head of the party from him in a vote of the militants and who has expressed reservations about the Nupes, is seated not far from the rebellious deputy Alexis Corbière.

"They could have gone back on the ISF, abolished the flat tax or imposed the superprofits as we + Bolsheviks +, we had asked," quipped the socialist leader.

"We will not let go, we will do the Zad not just in the Assembly, but throughout France", persisted the head of environmentalists Marine Tondelier, after similar remarks last week bristled the government and the macronie.

"We assume, this word ZAD (zone to defend) is the symbol of battles won in the past," she insisted.

Between the political interventions, testimonies from employees, trade unionists, feminists, punctuated the meeting.

To cheers, a CGT RATP official assured that Thursday "it's not going to go well", evoking a movement "which promises to be powerful".

He called for "enlargement, everyone has a place in this fight".

"This reform, the working world cannot accept it," said Mouloud, a worker in the logistics sector, calling for "weeks and weeks of mobilization".