Correspondent in Paris
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The security interior has become a national nightmare in France, electoral minefield. On the front line of crisis, Emmanuel Macron announces an increase in 15,000 million euros in the budget of the Ministry of the Interior, doubling the number of national police, if president is reelected.
Advancing the broad lines of its political / electoral program for the presidential election In April, during a trip to Nice, on the Côte d’Azur, a region highly sensitive to security problems, the President of the Republic confirmed the exceptional priority of his internal security policy: “Since my election as president, we have hired 10,000 new police officers in four years. I intend to double the number of policemen, on the ground, in the next few years.
In Macron’s opinion, the budget increase and the hiring of more police and gendarmes corresponds to a national emergency that has many fronts.
After purchasing power, security and the fight against terrorism It is the issue that most worries a large majority of French people who feel harassed and restless in the face of new realities: high crime, increasing violence against mayors, deputies, senators, local, regional and departmental politicians; striking increase in arms sales …
Between January and November of last year, 162 parliamentarians (deputies or senators), 605 mayors and more than 700 members of regional or departmental assemblies, were victims of physical and / or verbal attacks, threats of all kinds: graffiti with death threats with street fists, the French political class has been the victim of assaults all types.
France, the most armed country in Europe
At the same time, during the same period, France has established itself as the most armed country in Europe. In a country of 67 million inhabitants, more than 12 million weapons of fire, not always declared. 1.2 million French are hunters, but another 4 million have permission to possess firearms. The Ministry of the Interior has created a special computer service to try to control firearms owners.
Emmanuel Macron’s Nice speech on Monday, announcing his project to double the number of police officers present on the streets of France, is an indirect response to the campaigns of the right and the extreme right, denouncing the “climate of insecurity” that France lives, in his way of seeing.
Valerie Pécresse, candidate of Los Republicanos (LR, right, Nicolas Sarkozy’s party) for the presidency of the Republic, has declared: “The time has come to take out the sprayer again to clean some unsafe neighborhoods.” Pécresse alluded to some legendary statements by Sarkozy, in 2005, when the great crisis broke out in the Parisian and French suburbs. If elected president, Pécresse has promised a large national referendum to address issues such as the immigration and insecurity.
To the extreme right, Marine Le Pen Y Eric Zemmour They insist daily on the urgent need to “restore order” in “outside the law” areas.
Even the left, mired in a historic crisis, have taken up the issue of security / insecurity. To the extreme left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon He poses the underlying problem in these terms: “The tension is extreme in many places. We must lower that tension, changing working methods and managing these crises ».
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism