Macron's Journey to the Commemoration of the Great War is more political than it seems



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POLITICS – He goes to meet "our hairy ancestors", in the words of the Élysée. After a concert on the theme of Franco-German friendship in Strasbourg, Emmanuel Macron begins this Monday, November 5 in Moselle his journey in the theaters territories of the First World War. The President of the Republic will notably go to Morhange to attend a ceremony tribute to the French fighters killed in August 1914 during the battle of the borders.

From Verdun to the Somme, the French president will cross eleven departments in one week to go to the battlefields of the Great War and to meet a peripheral France hit by the crisis.

A journey in "new format", as the presidential palace likes to remind, which takes on several dimensions. Even if it is above all to honor the memory of the eight million French who fought from 1914 to 1918, as well as the ten years of the disappearance of the last Hairy Lazarus Ponticelli, the journey of Emmanuel Macron will also include a strong political and social connotation.

To reconnect with the territories

And the President of the Republic will play big during these seven days of wandering. While it is at the bottom of the polls and oppositions continue to castigate its exclusive presidency for the rich and the cities, the discontent of the French continues to rise on the issue of purchasing power, especially because of rising fuel prices.

This little music, fed by oppositions and describing a president of the haughty Republic, contemptuous and cut off from the realities of the field, has been following him since the beginning of his quinquennium or so. His relations with local authorities have also fallen to their lowest level before warming up somewhat after a presidential mea-culpa at the end of October.

Before that, the head of the mayors of France François Baroin castigated the attitude of the head of state and his policy of austerity vis-à-vis the territories. "The relationship is not good, it's a deaf dialogue, we've gone from disappointment to disappointment, it has altered confidence in depth, we have to say things", he was alarmed in September on RTLbefore talking about "situation close to breaking." The mayor of Troyes, in the Aube, even launched a few days later "a great call for decentralization" with Hervé Morin, president of the regions of France and Dominique Bussereau, the president of the departments.

Scheduled for a long time, the journey of Emmanuel Macron, a week away from Paris and major cities, is timely. In total, he will visit seventeen cities, mostly of medium size, like Charleville-Mezieres where Wednesday will be held a decentralized Council of Ministers.

Pay tribute to the territories that "get up"

At each stage, he will meet local elected representatives, a population with whom the executive tries to renew after months of tension. One way to put into practice the "reset complete "called for his wishes in a meeting with field officials in late October at the Elysee and initiated during his presidential address post-reshuffle.

The head of state will also visit factories, including that of Renault in Maubeuge, not far from the steel mill of Ascoval, threatened with closure. He will also visit an EPHAD to discuss health services in rural areas and will devote a morning to Lens in the fight against poverty, one of the few social measures taken by his government. "Each step will be an opportunity to address the current concerns of the territories visited, which are trying to rebound after being hit by deindustrialization and agricultural upheavals," says the Elysee.

Appointments that will offer the Head of State the opportunity to scratch a little the label of "president of the rich" or "cities" that keeps pasting his opponents. And the challenge is significant because, as the polls show, his perception has deteriorated considerably with an accumulation of small sentences and small controversies in a very short period of time.

After this "memory roaming" of several days in contact with the French, Emmanuel Macron will end his journey under the Arc de Triomphe Sunday, November 11, surrounded by a hundred foreign leaders, including US Presidents Donald Trump and Russian Vladimir Putin. After having revived the Flame of the Unknown Soldier, Emmanuel Macron will go to Vilette to plead once again for a "strong multilateralism" and a lasting peace. Another dimension of these commemorations of the end of the Great War.

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