P.President Macron’s expletive language for the unvaccinated is met with divided echoes. According to a poll by the Harris Interactive polling institute, 60 percent of French people disapprove of the language. Macron had used the verb “emmerder”, which is colloquially used for “to annoy someone mightily,” with a slightly scatological undertone. He wanted to really annoy the unvaccinated, declared the president, who otherwise prefers to quote writers from Goethe to Victor Hugo. He also immediately became specific and said that they should be largely excluded from social life and no longer be able to travel, go to restaurants or cafés or have fun in the cinema or theater.
68 percent of French respondents said that a president should not use slang expressions. Only the supporters of the presidential party La République en marche (LREM) disagree: they approve of the swear word to 60 percent. As for the gist of the President’s statement, most French people agree with Macron. Sixty percent agree with government policies of increasing pressure and restrictions on people who have not been vaccinated to get vaccinated. The level of agreement is even higher among the vaccinated respondents: 68 percent are in favor of government policy. Among the LREM supporters, it is even 90 percent of those surveyed. “What the President has said is in line with the anger of a large majority of French people at people who do not want to be vaccinated. If you speak to the French today, many will tell you that people who decide not to have a vaccination should not even be given intensive care, ”said government spokesman Gabriel Attal.
Explicit language wasn’t a slip up
In the Elysée Palace, the impression prevails that the president’s communication strategy has worked. In the middle of the Omikron wave with more than 330,000 new infections, Macron has catapulted himself into the center of the vaccination debate and above all pushed the right-wing presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse into a critics camp with the extreme right. It was not just since his brain-death provocation regarding NATO that Macron has been using shocking expressions to spark debates and force others to position themselves. We succeeded again this time. The swear phrase was not a slip-up, the Elysée Palace had been allowed to proofread the printed text beforehand. But the price that Macron is paying with this communication strategy is just as high: there is no longer any trace of the “benevolence” and “forgiveness” that he had promised the irritated country during the 2017 election campaign. France is as polarized as it was before Macron was elected.
“Yes, the unvaccinated give us difficulties. How many times have I told our fellow citizens that the fight against the pandemic is based on the individual sense of responsibility of each citizen? Those who are responsible do not infect others with impunity, they do not overload the intensive care units, ”warned Prime Minister Jean Castex in the National Assembly.
Early on Thursday morning he was able to report a success to the president. In the first reading, the MPs approved the introduction of a vaccination pass. This is intended to replace the previously valid health passport (“pass sanitaire”). In future, this means that only those who have been vaccinated from the age of 12 will have access to restaurants, cafés, cultural institutions and long-distance transport. The text, announced by the government in mid-December in the face of the galloping Covid-19 epidemic, was passed with 214 votes. 93 MPs voted against, including the Left Party, the Rassemblement National and three LREM dissidents. 27 parliamentarians abstained. The bill now has to be passed by the right-wing majority in the Senate at the beginning of next week so that it can come into force on January 15th. That was what the government wanted, but this date should now be postponed by a few days.
.
#Macrons #criticism #unvaccinated #trace #forgiveness