Paris vs periphery

Yellow Vest protests in France present the greatest challenge yet to the Macron presidency

Gilet Jaune, Yellow Vest protest, Emmanuel Macron’s presidency, Macron government, France protests, France partisan groups, France government, world news, Indian Express columns — A protester wearing yellow vest lights a flare during a protest against the arrest of Nebojsa Medojevic, a lawmaker and prominent opposition leader, in Podgorica, Montenegro, December 9, 2018. (Source: REUTERS)

Last Saturday, large sections of Paris wore a cloak of gloom, resembling a scene from a dark video game. Festive Christmas window displays were boarded shut by plywood and store entrances barricaded while several metro stations, museums and major tourist attractions, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, remained closed. The streets were curiously empty except for the presence of policemen and an eerie silence prevailed until the “Gilet Jaune” protesters descended on the capital.

As the day progressed, Paris took on an apocalyptic look. Violent clashes and stand-offs with the police erupted with the more-radicalised protesters and vandals using garbage bins, Christmas trees and ripped-off plywood to set up barricades that they ignited and water bottles and cobblestones as projectiles. Vehicles were torched and storefronts smashed. In a show of force, 8,000 police persons resorted to the use of armoured vehicles, tear gas, water cannons, flash balls and explosive grenades to control and contain an increasingly volatile crowd of demonstrators.

Though similar scenes of violence also unfolded in other French cities, at the end of the day, the government claimed a tremulous victory in what has been dubbed as Act IV of the protest movement. The numbers were lower than the previous weekend — down to 1,25,000 protesters from 1,36,000 across France. A lower number of injured and less damage to property was achieved by the massive deployment of 89,000 security personnel, hundreds of preventive detentions and better preparedness.

What exactly is the “Gilet Jaune” or Yellow Vest (also called Yellow Jacket) protest movement that has crept up, seemingly out of nowhere, and laid siege to an unsuspecting Emmanuel Macron’s presidency? Named for the high-visibility yellow safety vest that French motorists are obliged to carry and that has become the fluorescent identifier of the movement’s partisans, the protest is amorphous, unstructured and disorganised, driven by social media, especially Facebook, and for the most part, leaderless, with no clearly mandated representatives.