MOSCOW, Apr 3 Street art artist under the pseudonym Lekto drew graffiti in Avignon depicting French President Emmanuel Macron with a mustache similar to Hitler's, BFMTV broadcast on Monday.
The French leader looks out from the wall of the water supply structure along the road. He has gray hair, a mustache in the shape of the numbers 49.3, in large letters it says «NON MERCI» (no thanks), follows from the image published on the TV channel's website.
The figures are a reference to article 49.3 of the French constitution, which Prime Minister Elisabeth Born used to pass a bill to raise the retirement age without a vote in parliament.
The prefecture of the department of Vaucluse, where Avignon is located, has already ordered the erasure of the image, according to the channel's website.
Street art artist Lekto is famous in France for his political cartoons, which he posts on his Instagram page*. In July 2022, he graffitied Macron as a puppet of economist Jacques Attali, allegedly a close acquaintance of the president. Attali filed a lawsuit against the artist for incitement to discrimination, violence, hatred on the basis of anti-Semitism.
According to an Ifop poll for the Journal du Dimanche on March 19, Macron's popularity rating fell to a record low since 2019 amid an unpopular pension reform, with only 28% of the population supporting his actions.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Born on March 16 took advantage of article 49.3 of the constitution to pass a bill to raise the country's retirement age from 62 to 64 without a vote in parliament. Previously, this law has already caused a strong wave of protests, most of them gathered more than a million participants across the country. The demonstrations were accompanied by clashes between demonstrators and the police, pogroms and riots.
* The activities of Meta (social networks Facebook and Instagram) are banned in Russia as extremist.