“The unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off”: Emmanuel Macron returned to his provocative accents on Tuesday, in the midst of the Covid-19 epidemic and three months before the presidential election for which he said he also had “want” to represent himself.
In the midst of a heated debate in the Assembly on the future vaccination pass, it was with this raw word that he assumed he wanted to establish “almost an obligation to vaccinate”. A vocabulary which, unsurprisingly, immediately unleashed his opponents.
“The unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And so we will continue to do it, until the end. That’s the strategy,” said the head of state bluntly.
“Almost all of the people, more than 90%, have adhered” to the vaccination and “it is a very small minority that is resistant”, he adds.
“That one, how do we reduce it? We reduce it, sorry to say it, like that, by pissing him off even more. Me, I’m not for pissing off the French. I plague all day once morest the administration when it blocks them. Well there, the unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off, “he continues.
“I am not going to put them in prison, I am not going to forcibly vaccinate them. And so, you have to tell them: from January 15, you will no longer be able to go to the restaurant, you will no longer be able to take a cannon, you You will no longer be able to go for a coffee, you will no longer be able to go to the theater, you will no longer be able to go to the movies… “, explains the Head of State.
For him, “the immense moral fault of antivax” is to “undermine what is the solidity of a nation”. “When my freedom threatens that of others, I become irresponsible. An irresponsible person is no longer a citizen,” he judges in another shocking sentence.
His statements come at a time when the deputies had agreed to push back the age of the vaccination pass from 12 to 16 years for school trips as well as “extracurricular or extracurricular”, cultural or sports activities for example – but not private such as going to a restaurant, in order to appease an electric atmosphere in the Assembly, following the surprise suspension of the debates the previous night.
But the presidential remarks suddenly raised the temperature once more at the Palais Bourbon, with sitting suspensions in the midst of the heckling.
Communist deputy Fabien Roussel, candidate for the Elysee Palace, questioned “the real intentions of the government”. The bill on the health pass “is it a text to piss off more ?, or piss off less?” the French, he said.
“A president cannot keep the remarks which were made”, launched Christian Jacob, president of the Republicans. “I can not support a text that aims to piss off the French,” he added in a heated hemicycle.
The rebellious Jean-Luc Mélenchon was one of the first to react on Twitter. “Does the President have control over what he says? WHO says’ convince rather than coerce ‘. And him?’ Piss off more. Appalling”.
Present at the Assembly, the candidate of RN Marine Le Pen blasted a “declaration of unprecedented violence”, estimating on Twitter that the president, “guarantor of the unity of the nation, persists in dividing it and assumes that he wants to make second-class citizens of the unvaccinated “.
– Proud of the European flag –
Cash on the vaccine, it is with caution that Emmanuel Macron evokes his probable candidacy in 2022. “I want. As soon as there are the sanitary conditions that allow it and that I have clarified this subject, in me – even and in relation to the political equation, I will say what it is, “he assured.
On the other hand, he regained an attacking posture to intervene – belatedly – in the other controversy of the beginning of the year: the installation of the EU flag under the Arc de Triomphe on December 31, attacked in chorus by Valérie Pécresse, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.
“The European flag, I am proud of it, it is a symbol of peace”, he said, “this reaction was disproportionate and unwelcome”. However, he justified himself by explaining that the EU flag had been placed under the monument at a time when “there was nothing”.
Emmanuel Macron also responded to the taxation of inheritance, the reduction of which is defended by Valérie Pécresse, pleading to “help pass on modest assets”.
He also recognized, without details, the need to increase the salaries of caregivers and teachers but also to “rethink” their functions. And recognized a failure: not having succeeded in eliminating glyphosate in three years, as he had initially committed to.