Emmanuel Macron has been stopped by hecklers while on a stroll with his wife, with them calling for him to get rid of a police unit used in protests.
The French president stopped to engage with the group as he walked through Tuileries Garden in central Paris, where he was also pressed on his new interior minister, who has been accused of rape.
“Fire the BRAV,” someone repeatedly shouted, referring to the police unit of officers on motorbikes deployed when authorities fear violence at protests.
“It’s not the president of the Republic that does that,” Mr Macron said, before telling them to “be cool”.
Some of the group said they were “gilet jaunes“, a movement which led the protests the Brigades de répression de l’action violente motorisées (BRAV-M) police units were first deployed against, according to Le Figaro newspaper.
As the heated conversation between Mr Macron and the hecklers continue, the president reminds them they have stopped him while on a walk on his wife on Bastille Day, a national holiday.
“You’re my employee,” one of them shouts.
Mr Macron was also challenged over his controversial appointment of Gerald Darmanin. “You have put an interior minister in the government who is accused of rape,” someone said.
“You’re not a judge? Me neither,” he said, adding he had already replied to this issue earlier on.
He said on Tuesday Mr Darmanin should not be made a “victim of a judgment on the streets” following protests over his appointment.
The new interior minister has denied the allegation that he coerced a woman into having sex in 2009 when she sought his help in having her criminal record cleared, and a judge dismissed the case against him after a preliminary investigation into the allegation was dropped.
A judicial source told Reuters last month the Paris appeal court had ordered the investigation to be reopened although no new evidence had been found.
Mr Macron was stopped by the hecklers on Bastille Day, when the usual military parade in Paris turned into commemoration to frontline workers instead in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
Over the other side of the city, however, health workers protested for better working conditions and pay, and decried years of cost cuts that left public hospitals ill-prepared when the virus raced across France.
Additional reporting by agencies
