France’s Yellow Vests might enter politics

Bloomberg

France’s Yellow Vests may have peaked as a protest movement, but they are contemplating a next step: presenting candidates in next May’s European elections to provide another outlet for voters angry at President Emmanuel Macron.
The limited amount of polling so far suggests a Yellow Vests campaign wouldn’t impact Macron’s party in selecting legislators for the European Parliament.
Instead, it would splinter the populist opposition.
Any decision is far away, partly because the movement is made up of local branches and partly because many participants reject any form of politics as usual — including cooperating with each other.
“The movement is very divided over this issue but some of us don’t want to spend the rest of our lives hanging out on roundabouts,” said Christophe Deriaz, a 49-year-old night watchman in Auxerre in Burgundy, who manages a Facebook page with 10,000 members that coordinates the local protests. His chapter is setting up an organisation that will elect representatives as
a first step to taking part in the European vote.
Hayk Shahinyan, a 29-year-old salesman who is a Yellow Vests organiser in Normandy, said in a Facebook posting that of 8,000 people who voted in an online referendum, 83 percent were in favour of taking part in the elections. “We want to invade the political field,” he said, adding that he wants “normal people: workers, unemployed people, office workers.”
And Francis Lalanne, a singer who has backed various causes in his career, told reporters that he’d secured an $910,000 loan to start seeking candidates. “We are aiming for the European elections, the regionals, the municipals, to paint the country yellow,” he said.
The grassroots movement, named after the vests motorists must keep in their cars for emergencies, began in early November to protest rising gasoline taxes, then morphed into a wider protest against the high cost of living and Macron’s perceived aloof style. Protests mostly involved roadblocks at roundabouts and toll plazas, but turned violent on weekends in cities across France. While the city protests have weakened, Yellow Vests have been demolishing and burning toll booth plazas around the country in recent days.