Yellow Vests face big decision while Macron defends

After nearly three months of demonstrations, the movement of the yellow jacket in France, which rejected any official direction or political affiliation, has split on the issue of the opportunity to embark on electoral politics.

This movement of citizens has already forced the first president Emmanuel Macron to reverse his policy. So far, five distinct groups have emerged and are considering challenging the next elections: either the May European legislative elections or the French local elections next year.

According to a recent poll, a single list could garner 13% of the French vote for the European elections, mainly by removing voters from the far-right and far-left parties of Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. .

Why fight the elections?

"We know we can not stay in the roundabouts forever," said Come Dunis, a candidate of one of the newly formed parties, the Citizens Initiative Rally.

"We can not demonstrate every Saturday, we have to enter the electoral system."

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Mr Dunis is second on the list of parties for the European elections. The transformation of the protest movement into a political party, he explains, is "turning the page of a political elite that has despised us for 40 years."

"We will show that the unemployed and forklift operators can sit in Brussels alongside technocrats and bureaucrats," he said.

the yellow vests have so far drawn strength from their diversity and scale.

Without recognized national leaders, without a coherent set of demands, or even agreed political perspectives, the French government struggled to negotiate with the French government – and Macron ended up offering more concessions than many expected.

So, why change the formula?

Yellow vests were forced to organize or die, according to Olivier Costa, director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research of France.

"They were stuck," he said.

"Participation [in the protests] was declining and the government would not accept their main demands to hold new elections or to hold more referendums. As a result, they found themselves continuing to protest, without knowing where or why they were going. "

But Costa thinks that the same constraints on their influence in the street will hamper them in electoral politics.

"No yellow vests leaders have the knowledge, the qualities or the resources to become a powerful [political] chief, he said. They can not write or write, they are not rich like Trump, they have neither the network nor the connections. "

They discover that outside the system, it is difficult to have much political impact in France, he believes.

Will Macron be the ultimate winner?

The diversity of the movement posed problems in organizing itself into a single political bloc. And few groups have a coherent list of policies.

But even if candidates for the yellow vest won only 7 to 8% of the vote in the European elections, Olivier Costa says that the real loser would be the far right, for whom it would be a "disaster".

"The main winner would obviously be President Macron," he said.

"His great task is to be ahead of the far right in these elections – and with the yellow vests while running, it will be. "

The risk of inadvertently helping President Macron is one of the reasons some yellow vests boycott entry projects into mainstream politics. Others think that it would also weaken the movement itself.

"These lists will only serve the power of the executive," said Benjamin Cauchy, one of the founders of the movement based in Toulouse.

"While on the roundabouts, there are people on the left, the far left, the right, the far right – all united in the same desire for fiscal and social justice, they will not be able to to agree on issues such as migration.

"If they want to draw up a list, they must choose a political party, which will result in a division of yellow vests. "

Another of yellow vests Jason Herbert, who gained national fame, refused two applications for membership to the new party lists.

He believes that the protesters do not want to engage in politics and that their goal is rather to persuade the current representatives of France to take certain political decisions.

How Macron reacted

President Macron has tried to dispel the discontent that prevails in the country by organizing what he calls a "big debate": a series of local meetings held throughout France to discuss political, economic and social reforms.

• Will the big Macron debate tackle the yellow vest crisis?

His poll results are on the rise and he dismissed the reform that unites many yellow vests: make it easier for citizens to trigger referendums on key issues.

But he suggested that he could "ask our citizens if they agree" on some constitutional changes chosen by the government, such as reducing the number of deputies in the French parliament or limiting the number of terms that they can serve.

"There is a risk that the debate will create frustrations," said Said Ahamada, MP of Macron's party, LREM, in Marseille.

"We have not been able to meet the expectations of the French," he admits. "And 18 months after the elections, they are impatient, the French society believes less and less in its political leaders."

Does this mean that French leaders should be afraid of movements like the yellow vests, seeking to change the country from outside its established political system?

Olivier Costa says no.

"France is an old democracy and the people are critical of its institutions," he said. "But it's not the Arab Spring and it's not a dictatorship."

"There were polls at the beginning of this movement saying that 80% of French people thought it was positive and interesting.This does not mean that 80% of French people are ready for a yellow vest to be the next president ".