The popularity of French President , Emmanuel Macron , plummeted 10 points in a month , informed yesterday the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD).
According to the publication, that fall has been fueled by the controversy between Macron and former Chief of the Defense Staff, Pierre de Villiers .
The satisfaction of the French population with his mandate is now of 54% , according to the survey conducted by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) between July 17 and 22 , just when Villiers resigned on July 19 due to his disagreement with the budget cut.
The JDD informed that this setback is the second largest experimented by a President after three months of administration, just behind Jacques Chirac 's fall of 15 points , between May and July 1995.
De Villiers left the post dissatisfied with the cut of 850 million euros planned for this year for the Ministry of Defense, despite Macron guaranteed that in 2018 that Ministry will have an amount of 34.200 million euros , compared to 32.700 in 2017 .
At that time, the opposition , both on the right and left, did not wait to criticize Macron on this conflict and reproach him for cutting the funds for the Army at a time when the country faces many challenges .
Last Wednesday , Republican Senator Gérard Longuet complained that the President had chosen to defend the Ministry of Finance "instead of the Army."
The President of the ultra-right National Front, Marine Le Pen , denounced in a statement that "humiliating a man like De Villiers" is not worthy of a responsible head of state ."
The weekly says that although this crisis which has tested Macron's authority and has caused the media to question the possible end of its "state of grace" has had a significant weight in the decline of his popularity, the French are also worried about other issues such as the future reform of the labor code .
"Some people surveyed loudly criticize a communication-based presidency," said IFOP's department director Jérôme Fourquet .
To compare, the socialist François Hollande had a popularity of 56% in July 2012 , and the conservative Nicolás Sarkozy of 66%, five years earlier, added the publication, which anticipates for Macron a difficult autumn , which has already convened in September a great union strike against the labor reform.
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