(Zaman Al Wasl)- From her balcony on the third floor, the old woman with a yellow vest appeared, the protestors in the street chanted to her, a broad smile filling her face, as if she had just achieved a dream that had eluded her for a long time and soon burst into tears. She cried until her husband start to wave her tears.
It happened in the city of Tarbes, in the south of France, but it happens and is repeated everywhere. They are people who share a great suffering, manifested in the poverty caused by the heavy taxes on the total number of pensions and the rise in prices.
Thousands of ‘Yellow Vest’ protesters marched through the streets of the small town, some of them from the nearby countryside, they stopped in front of the city's Merry and then in “prefecture” with the local police, without a riot, discussing the consequences and the role of the police.
The number of protesters seems great compared to the small city, journalist Jean Francois, who works in a local newspaper, says that the majority of the population affected by higher taxes and higher prices is the social groups of older and retired people.
As for the future of the protests and whether they will achieve their goals, Francois told Zaman al-Wasl. "There is no doubt that the concessions made by the French president have led to a decrease in the number of protesters. Their numbers are expected to decrease on Christmas and the beginning of the year next week".
But the journalist was likely to continue even with less momentum, to meet all of her political demands and urge the French president to respond quickly to their wishes before they turned to insisting him to leave or forced him to hold early elections.
Many protesters called for the departure of Emmanuel Macron. One of them described it as the thief of the poor, while a sign at the front of the protesters' convoy demanded a new world. It was the mouthpiece of the protesters demanding political change alongside the economist.
At the same time, with the peaceful protests in the city, some yellow vest protestors were spread out at the entrances and exits of highways, preventing motorists from paying the road toll. Even the police did not take them away from the collection places.
Annie, one of the participants in the movement, justified this as a kind of pressure on the president and the government to respond to their demands and vowed to escalate the protest until the roads were cut off.
The ‘Yellow Vest’ movement in Tarbes, the remarkable city in this movement, took part in the protests since the first week and carried out one-day partial strikes a week and did not witnessed riot or encounters with the police.
The participants expressed anger at the lack of media attention to their movements except the local media that was limited in large cities.
Zaman Al Wasl
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