France: Protests in Paris After Macron's Electoral Victory, Police Use Tear Gas

After French President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected on Sunday, 24 April, protests erupted in central Paris.

(Photo: screenshot of video tweeted by @doxograf)

After French President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected on Sunday, 24 April, protests erupted in central Paris, Reuters reported.

Videos viral on social media showed riot police charging and using teargas on demonstrators, trying to break up a crowd of mostly young people.

The protests were reportedly held by people who were not happy with the outcome of the election.

Macron defeated far-right leader Marine Le Pen in a runoff vote and won a second five-year term, securing his throne with 58.6 of the vote share.

Le Pen's vote share, however, with 41.4 percent of the vote, increased by 7.5 percentage points, in comparison to the 2017 results.

Nevertheless, Macron is not a very popular leader in France, and experts say that it has less to do with his policies and more to do with his personality.

"In a certain way, he embodies something that prompts very profound rejection… There's this image that sticks to him… of distance, of contempt," historian Pierre Rosanvallon explained recently on broadcaster France Inter, reported by Deutsche Welle.

Macron had once remarked that he wanted to "piss-off" the unvaccinated with new restrictions on social interactions.

"The unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And so, we're going to continue doing so, until the end. That's the strategy," he had said.

(With inputs from Reuters and AFP)