More than 100,000 people protested across France on Saturday against the appointment of centre-right politician Michel Barnier as the new prime minister.
His appointment comes after inconclusive elections in which the left-wing bloc – the New People’s Front (NPF) – won the largest number of seats in the National Assembly.
The protests were called by unions and NPF members, outraged that His candidate for prime minister was rejected by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Barnier said he is open to forming a government with politicians from across the parliamentary spectrum, including the left.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, 110,000 people protested across the country on Saturday26,000 of them in Paris, although one protest leader said the figure was as high as 300,000.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a veteran activist of the radical party La France Insoumise, called for the “most powerful mobilization possible.”
Some 130 demonstrations were called, the largest of which started in central Paris on Saturday afternoon.
Mélenchon joined the protest in Paris, giving a speech from a float that read “Let’s stop Macron’s coup”.
Protesters also chanted slogans describing the situation as a “denial of democracy” or a “stolen election.”
Left-wing parties are upset that their prime ministerial candidate, Lucie Castets, was rejected by Macron, who said she had no chance of surviving a confidence vote in the National Assembly.
Barnier could survive a vote of no confidence because the far right, which also won a large number of seats, has said it will not automatically vote against him.
This has led to criticism that his government will be dependent on the far right.
“We have a prime minister who is completely dependent on the National Rally (the far-right party led by Marine Le Pen),” Castets said.
Barnier visited a Paris children’s hospital on Saturday afternoon, where he stressed the importance of public services but told medical staff that his government “is not going to perform miracles,” local media reported.
Contacts to form a government
Against the backdrop of the protests, the new prime minister is focused on forming a new government.
After holding talks with leaders of the right and the center coalition, he said that The conversations were going very well and were “charged with energy.”
Some on the left have claimed responsibility for Barnier’s eventual end as prime minister.
Paris’s socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said the president had considered former Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve for the post, but he had been rejected by his own party.
Another socialist mayor, Karim Bouamrane, blamed the intransigence of some parts of the left-wing coalition: “The path they chose was 100% or nothing, And here we are with nothing“.
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