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Garbage bags that have been piling up on the pavement as waste collectors are on strike since March 6 to protest against the French government's proposed pensions reform, in Paris on March 27, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Eiffel Tower of trash, ELN attack, Saudi-China lovefest, drill baby drill is back, dream on Lesotho
10,000: Sanitation workers in Paris finally returned to work Wednesday, ending a weekslong strike over the government's controversial law to raise the minimum retirement age to 64. The City of Lights is now a stinker buried under 10,000 metric tons of trash — roughly the same weight as the iconic Eiffel Tower.
9: At least nine Colombian soldiers at a base in the country's northeast were killed in an attack by rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN). This attack comes as President Gustavo Petro, who's facing very low approval ratings, says he is trying to bring "total peace" to Colombia.
9: Saudi Arabia will become the ninth dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the first step toward full membership in the China-led security bloc. Riyadh is moving closer to Beijing and further away from Washington since the Chinese brokered an Iran-Saudi détente earlier this month.
73.3 million: The Biden administration is auctioning off 73.3 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico — an area the size of Italy — for oil and gas drilling. So much for the dude who campaigned on ending (new) drill, baby, drill on federal lands.
93,000: The parliament of Lesotho, a landlocked mountain kingdom entirely surrounded by South Africa, is debating a motion to more than triple its size to 93,000 square miles by claiming big chunks of its neighbor's territory that Lesotho says were taken by white South African settlers. We will keep an ear out for the laughter coming from Pretoria.
French protests strengthen the far right & far left
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Venice, Italy, on the French protests and Boris Johnson's Partygate fallout.
What's really happening in France?
It's a very difficult situation. Protests all over the place. The political landscape is fractured. What's going to happen in the National Assembly is everyone's guess. And it is, for the moment, strengthen both the far right and the far left, with the center of French politics imploding. Difficult situation for Macron. Let's hope that he gets through it.
Have we now seen the end of the political career of Boris Johnson in the UK?
That remains to be seen. I don't think there's ever an end to that, more or less. But what has been happening is that Prime Minister Sunak has been able to get control of the Conservative Party. He got through the agreement with the European Union on Northern Ireland, and it was only Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and a couple of the hard liners that voted against. So I think he is now in better control of the party and Boris Johnson is more isolated than he's been for a long time. Good news.
Demonstration against pension reform took place in Bordeaux.
Rage and violence paralyze France
Days after the French government passed much-despised pension reforms, chaos reigns throughout the country.
At least 457 people were arrested and more than 441 security personnel were injured on Thursday in protests over the reforms, which will incrementally increase the retirement age from 62 to 64. For background on why President Emmanuel Macron says the reforms are central to plugging France’s ballooning debt hole and boosting productivity, see here.
Unions claimed that 3.5 million workers protested on Thursday, while the government said the number was closer to 1 million. Either way, it was the most violent day in a series of protests that have gripped the country for months.
What’s more, there are claims that agitators have taken advantage of the discord to wreak havoc. The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said that the majority of protesters arrested in Paris were members of “ultra left” groups, though that claim has been difficult to verify.
Indeed, fires were rife in Paris, where trash has been piling up for weeks amid strikes, and in the famed-wine region of Bordeaux, demonstrators set fire to the town hall. Additionally, schools remain closed and transportation grounded to a halt – including air travel – as a result of industrial strikes.
Many French say they were moved to hit the streets with renewed intensity after Macron made a media appearance earlier this week saying that protests were “legitimate” but that he would not back down on the reforms.
Meanwhile, the unrest is alarming enough that King Charles III has postponed a planned visit to the country set to take place next week.
Unions want the strikes to force a government U-turn, but authorities are now cracking down on protester violence with more forceful containment measures. Who will flinch first?
Car drivers queue to fill their fuel tank at a TotalEnergies gas station in Nice as petrol supplies are disrupted by a strike of French refineries and depots, France, March 20, 2023.
Hard Numbers: French oil refinery blockades, China’s mRNA milestone, Moscow comes to Bali, IMF tweaks rules for Ukraine, TikTok hearing
13: As French protesters continue to strike and block oil refineries in response to the government’s recently passed pension reform, 13% of petrol stations around the country are running short on gas. What’s more, a lack of shipments from LNG terminals is raising fears of shortages – and elevated prices – across Europe.
1: China has finally approved its first mRNA COVID vaccine for emergency use. Beijing says that the drug shows high rates of protection when administered as a booster, though it provided few other details.
22,000: Most Russians fleeing conscription and oppression have gone to Georgia, Armenia, and even Turkey. But many have also fled to faraway … Bali. Now, Bali’s governor has asked Indonesia’s central government to rescind a rule allowing Russians and Ukrainians to apply for visas upon arrival, pointing to the fact that 22,000 Russians arrived on the island in January alone. Jakarta introduced the measure to get a post-COVID tourism bump, but some say the newcomers are ruining the island’s zen.
15.6 billion: The IMF has agreed to a preliminary loan for Ukraine worth a whopping $15.6 billion, the biggest package for Kyiv since Russia’s invasion began in Feb. 2022 – though it still needs to be approved by the board. In order to get this deal across the line, the IMF, whose main shareholder is the US, recently changed a rule to allow loans to go to countries facing “exceptionally high uncertainty.”
5: The Federal Reserve hiked interest rates by a quarter point, bringing its key short-term interest rate up to 5%. The decision signals that the Fed is continuing its campaign to temper inflation and consumer price increases, even after the recent banking turmoil.
150 million: That’s how many of its users TikTok claims are US-based, according to its CEO, Shou Zi Chew. On Thursday, Sou will testify before a US House committee hearing to answer questions about the suspected ties of ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to China’s ruling Communist Party amid growing calls for a US ban.
Members of parliament hold placards after the result of the vote on the first motion of no-confidence against the French government at the National Assembly in Paris, France, March 20, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Slim win for Macron, protests in South Africa, Trump’s legal woes, Colombia peace collapsing?
Macron’s narrow escape
It came down to the wire, but Emmanuel Macron’s government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in France’s National Assembly on Monday, with 278 voting to topple the government, nine votes shy of the threshold needed to pass.
Quick recap: The motion was triggered after Macron used a constitutional provision last week -- bypassing a vote in the lower house -- to pass a controversial pension reform despite weeks of protests (more on that here).
Not only do 70% of French adults abhor Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62 by 2030 – which he says is necessary to plug the growing debt hole – but the French electorate, which has long had a libertarian streak, is also furious that the government used what it says is an anti-democratic loophole to pass the measure.
Macron’s troubles are only just beginning. Hundreds were arrested in Paris over the weekend and on Monday as anti-government protests turned violent and smelly. Unions have called for nationwide demonstrations and strikes in a bid to pressure the government to roll back the measures (which will never happen).
Prime Minister Élizabeth Borne will likely take the fall and resign. Still, Macron, already unpopular before this debacle, will emerge a diminished political figure. After previously saying he understood that people were “tired of reforms which come from above,” it will be very hard for the ideological chameleon to regain the trust of vast swathes of the population.
South Africa’s day of demonstrations
Amid rolling blackouts and a slumping economy, the Marxist-linked Economic Freedom Fighters Party called for a national day of protests Monday, putting law enforcement on high alert.
The EFF, the country’s third-largest party led by longtime leader Julius Malema, is largely backed by poor Black South Africans, many of whom live in townships, as well as younger voters who feel they haven't benefited from the ruling African National Congress Party’s tenure in the post-apartheid era. Indeed, around one-third of South Africans are out of work and the economy is slated to grow by just 0.3% in 2023, down from 2.5% in 2022.
President Cyril Ramaphosa mobilized more than 3,000 troops nationwide in anticipation of mass protests. But turnout was lower than expected, prompting Malema to claim that the government was blocking buses transporting protesters.
The EFF “will still claim the wall-to-wall media coverage around the protests as a victory,” says Ziyanda Sturrman, a South Africa expert at Eurasia Group.
None of this is good news for Ramaphosa, who, after a series of political scandals, looks set to lose his parliamentary majority in next year’s general election. Still, Stuurman notes that if the ANC falls just below the 50% threshold, several small parties have already put their hands up to join an ANC-led coalition.
Trump vs. prosecutors
Former US President Donald Trump faces possible legal challenges on multiple fronts. The state of New York could charge him with fraud for alleged hush money payments to a porn star. The Justice Department could charge him with many suspected crimes related to efforts to overthrow the result of the 2020 election as well as the misuse of hundreds of classified documents recovered by the FBI from his Florida home. Prosecutors in Georgia could charge him with election fraud as part of his alleged effort to overturn that state’s 2020 election result.
If Trump is indicted, he’ll likely present himself for charges, while also calling for protests. He would then be released on bond pending trial, and it’s unlikely that any trial in any of these potential cases would take place in 2023.
Trump would continue his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. There’s nothing in the US Constitution to prevent him from being elected president. His fate would remain with voters. If elected, his presidency would begin in court. In theory, a president could pardon himself for federal crimes. That would have to be tested. But no president can pardon state-level crimes, like those he might be charged with in New York and Georgia. In short, prosecutors and Trump may be about to steer American politics into uncharted waters.
Colombia: Is Petro’s “total peace” going to pieces?
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro took office last year pledging to reach a negotiated “total peace” with the country’s various armed and criminal groups. But on Monday that strategy took a big hit when he was forced to suspend a three-month-old ceasefire with the fearsome Clan del Golfo (Gulf Clan), the Andean region’s most powerful narco-trafficking outfit. The Clan had allegedly attacked an aqueduct and opened fire on police officers.
The move puts Petro in a tough spot — ramping up military action risks escalating a conflict he was elected in part to end peacefully. But allowing cartels to run riot isn’t an option either.
The setback comes amid a broader season of discontent for Petro: a corruption investigation of his son, the departure of several key coalition ministers, and an approval rating that is net-negative barely six months since he took office.
Petro, a former guerilla who is the country’s first left-wing president, has made an effort to build bridges across the political spectrum so far. But his critics worry that if the going gets tougher, he might resort to a more populist style that could be explosive in a country as polarized as Colombia.
Israeli constitutional crisis despite compromise attempts
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Jerusalem on the protests in Israel and France.
What is really happening in Israel?
Well, it is really a profound crisis. It is cultural. We might argue it is political. It's got to be constitutional. The new government of Prime Minister Netanyahu, very much to the right, is trying to change the constitutional legal order of the country, and that is heavily opposed by large segments of Israeli society. The president has been trying to broker compromises failed, the crisis was only deepened to the detriment of the society and strength of Israel.
What is happening in France with the pension reform?
Well, this is a key thing for President Macron in his efforts to modernize and make France a more productive country and productive economy in the future with pension reform. He has been heavily opposed. And he hoped that he was going to get it through the National Assembly fairly easily. He had to resort to other extremely unusual, not unique, but unusual constitutional measures. He got it through profound crisis, heavy opposition. His government will face a vote of non-confidence, likely to survive it. And I think President Macron will actually get the reform through.
- Israel’s looming constitutional crisis: What’s the tech sector going to do about it? ›
- What We’re Watching: Chaos in Israel, Franco-British thaw, Trump's deepening legal woes, Biden’s budget battle ›
- What We’re Watching: French pension strikes, Nord Stream saboteurs, a centrist battle in the US, Canadian elections vs. China ›
- Macron’s big gamble ›
Thousands gathered at the Place de la Concorde to denounce the government’s use of a constitutional loophole to pass the pension reform, raising the retirement age without a vote in the National Assembly.
What We’re Watching: France’s fiery response, Poland’s first big step, Israeli president’s “civil war” warning
Macron bypasses the legislature on pension reform
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday made the risky call to bypass the National Assembly, France’s powerful lower house, and push through a very unpopular pension reform scheme.
As expected, protesters responded with anger. More than 300 people were arrested overnight, and on Friday morning demonstrators halted production at a fuel refinery and briefly blocked traffic on a highway outside Paris.
(A brief recap on the proposal that’s sent France into a tailspin: Macron’s government wants to incrementally raise the national retirement age by two years to 64 by 2030. Starting from 2027, workers will need to have worked for 43 years, up from 41, to access a full pension.)
Why’s he doing this? Macron has long said that France's public spending, 14% of which goes toward its pension scheme – the highest of any OECD country after Greece and Italy – is crucial to addressing its growing debt-to-GDP ratio. But this approach is very unpopular in France, where retirement is sacred and government interference is abhorred.
Fearing he wouldn’t have the votes in the lower chamber, Macron triggered a constitutional loophole to get the bill through (it had already passed in the upper chamber). But by taking this route – which his political opponents say renders the bill illegitimate, though it is legal – Macron now opens himself up to serious political blowback.
On Friday, a group of opposition centrist lawmakers — backed by the far-left NUPES coalition — filed a no-confidence vote against the government, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen announced she'll table her own. But any vote would need to pass by an absolute majority to topple the government – meaning PM Élisabeth Borne and the cabinet, not the president. Still, that’s very unlikely to happen, analysts say.
But Macron, who cannot run again after 2027 due to term limits, is not out of the woods. Unions have vowed to make the government pay, and prolonged strikes are expected. Meanwhile, far-left and far-right factions say they’ll intensify efforts to topple the French government.
Bibi rejects judicial compromise. What now?
It’s been another dramatic 24 hours in Israel as the country moves closer toward a constitutional crisis over judicial reform. President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, came out with a compromise proposal to placate both the government — pushing to limit the power of the courts — and opposition factions that dub the move a judicial coup. Crucially, Herzog warned that the prospect of “civil war” looms large.
Five (out of six) opposition party leaders now say they support Herzog’s proposal, which they can live with despite not being perfect. But Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, who’s increasingly powerless as he tries to appease a discordant far-right coalition, rejected the pitch, calling it “one-sided.”
Meanwhile, anti-government protests continued to sweep Tel Aviv and elsewhere, and scores of army reservists said that they will not show up for training in protest.
As the government moves ahead with its plans, the future looks more and more uncertain. What’ll happen if the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passes a law which then gets struck down by the Supreme Court? Would citizens — and the military — obey the legislature or the courts? When asked what to expect, Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli justice and foreign minister, said: "Anarchy.”
Polish fighter jets for Ukraine
Ukraine finally got its wish — sort of. On Thursday, Poland announced that it’ll supply Kyiv with MiG-29 fighter jets, the first NATO member to do so. That sounds like a big deal, right? Yes and no.
For months, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has been begging the US and its European friends for warplanes to fight Russia. But NATO allies have been slow-walking him because that might push the Russians to escalate on the battlefield. Yet, the Soviet-era MiGs — of which Ukraine has a few dozen relics — are hardly the modern warplanes Zelensky wants, and they’re no match for Russia’s Su-27s.
Still, perhaps Poland's gambit will encourage other NATO countries to follow suit — and maybe even force a rethink on sending Ukraine more high-tech warplanes in the future. After all, that's exactly what happened weeks ago with heavy tanks until the US and Germany changed their mind.French President Emmanuel Macron.
What We’re Watching: A big day for Macron, Taiwan’s friend list, Russia droning on
A tense France waits
It’s a big day for French President Emmanuel Macron. After months of protests, strikes, and piling up trash, the National Assembly is set to decide on whether – and how – to vote on the president’s very unpopular pension reform plan, which would raise the national retirement age by two years to 64. (For a reminder of what’s at stake with this reform, why Macron says it is necessary, and why two-thirds of French despise it, see our explainer here.)
With only a slim majority in the lower house, Macron’s bloc needs support from at least some center-right lawmakers from Les Republicains to see this through, but it is still unclear if he’ll have the numbers, particularly since some of his own coalition members say they won't back the bill.
Macron now faces a very tough choice: call for a vote and risk losing the fight over his biggest domestic priority, which would see him turned into a lame duck president for the remainder of his five-year term. Or trigger a constitutional loophole that would rush the bill through without a vote but risk setting the streets on fire. If he chooses the latter, unions warn, his government will pay a hefty price...
Honduras unfriends Taiwan
(The People's Republic of) China swiped one of Taiwan's few remaining diplomatic chips this week when Honduras announced it'll change official recognition of China's government from Taipei to Beijing.
It's unclear why Honduran President Xiomara Castro — who promised to switch sides before she was elected in 2021 but then walked it back once in power — changed her mind again. Regardless, Honduras’ U-turn will surely overshadow Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s visit next week to Central America. Taiwan still has friends there in Belize and Guatemala, but Xi Jinping is spending big in the region to counter Taipei's diplomatic clout.
China, for its part, is paying more attention to the second leg of Tsai's trip. She also plans to travel to California to meet US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who finally decided against irking Beijing by emulating his predecessor with his own Taiwan visit.
Where’s the drone?
After the encounter between a Russian fighter jet and an American-made drone above the Black Sea, some have warned of a risk of an escalation in the Ukraine war that pits Russia directly against the US. That’s extremely unlikely.
The Biden administration, which on Thursday gave the US military the green light to release footage of the crash, has been clear and consistent that its support for Ukraine won’t include actions that bring US and NATO soldiers into direct conflict with Russian forces. And though Vladimir Putin has tried to persuade Russians and the world that Russia’s at war with the West, he has avoided any action that might push his military into a broader war it would quickly lose. (If Putin wanted a wider war, it would be very easy to start one.)
Nor is this incident particularly unusual. As the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted on Tuesday, “Russian forces have used coercive signaling against US and allied flights and naval vessels for decades in multiple theaters without triggering conflict.” The US will continue to use drones in the Black Sea to provide Ukraine with intel on Russian actions. But there is one aspect of this story we’re still watching: Can Russia recover the wreckage of the drone? If so, and it’s in decent condition, it might give Russian engineers access to advanced drone technologies they don’t already have.