Police teargas Paris protestors after Macron re-elected

Reuters

15:34 JST, April 25, 2022

PARIS (Reuters) – Riot police charged and sprayed teargas on demonstrators in central Paris protesting after President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected on Sunday, footage from social media showed.

Police sought to break up a crowd of mostly young people who had gathered in the central neighborhood of Chatelet to protest, images on Twitter showed.

Macron defeated far-right leader Marine Le Pen in a runoff vote earlier on Sunday by winning a second five-year term and preventing what would otherwise have been a major political upset.

Although Macron won by a comfortable margin, the abstention rate was expected to settle at the highest since 1969, with a substantial chunk of voters unwilling to vote for either Macron or Le Pen.

Between the first round of voting and Sunday’s runoff, students protested outside the Sorbonne in Paris and other universities, expressing their disillusionment with the choice on offer.