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Clémence Guetté denounced the police response after the October 17 protest and urged political action
The vice president of the National Assembly and La France insoumise leader said the security operation was excessive and blamed the government for what happened. She also said her party would bring student demands, wages and cost-of-living issues to the prime minister.
Clémence Guetté, vice president of the National Assembly and a leading figure in La France insoumise, criticized the French government’s handling of the October 17 demonstrations and described the policing strategy as a failure.
In an interview with France Info, Guetté said her party would attend the meeting called by the prime minister around Sébastien Lecornu, but with the aim of changing the agenda. She said a letter had been sent setting out three priorities: high school students’ demands, the cost of living and purchasing power, and security issues.
According to France Info, Guetté argued that a popular mobilization has been under way for more than a month and requires political answers. Among the issues she listed were the student proposals, including the abolition of Parcoursup, as well as union demands for wage increases and a higher index point for public employees.
She held the government responsible for the unrest and specifically pointed to the interior minister, whom she identified as Nuñez. She said the minister himself had acknowledged the failure by offering his resignation to the prime minister, who refused it, according to her account on France Info.
Speaking about the October 17 operation, Guetté said the security deployment was completely disproportionate. She said that at Place de la République it was impossible to reach the authorized march without being tear-gassed or kettled by police, and questioned how shops could be looted while participants in the authorized demonstration were being contained that way.
She also challenged the government’s response of curfews, military deployments and broad repression in the face of political demands. While she said security must be guaranteed, she argued that the authorities failed to protect both public order and the right to protest.
Guetté added that unions left their meeting with Sébastien Lecornu without answers and therefore called for strike action starting on November 5, France Info reported. At the same time, she confirmed a call to mobilize from that Saturday at 2 p.m. at Place de la République in Paris, as well as elsewhere in the country.
Separately, Le Monde reported that, after the October 17 protests, security concerns also surfaced in the parliamentary dispute over whether the National Assembly should sit on October 24 and 25. The newspaper said that issue was compounded by the difficulty of dealing with 2,500 amendments to the Social Security financing bill.
Sources
About this piece. Written by El Notero with AI assistance, from reporting published by the outlet cited above. El Notero did no original reporting on this story.
