Night of fires, looting in

Lille as protests sweep France

LILLE, France—A burned district office, another pelted with stones, “lots of looting”: in Lille, in the north of France, a game of cat and mouse played out into the wee hours of Friday morning between authorities and protesters.

As in other French cities, the metropolis of one and a half million near the Belgian border has been convulsed by at-times violent demonstrations since Tuesday’s fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old named Nahel in Nanterre, near Paris.

The incident revived longstanding grievances about policing and racial profiling in France’s multi-ethnic suburbs, but some in Lille suggested the backlash had gone too far, even as they denounced the shooting.

In the district of Wazemmes, firefighters worked until after midnight to extinguish a blaze that damaged the ground floor and blackened the facade of the local district hall.

“Burning a district hall is useless,” said 22-year-old bus driver Sofiane, standing in front of the charred edifice as fireworks sounded in the distance.

“The cop who did this did not have to do it”, he said of the officer who shot Nahel, “but attacking public places, what does it serve?”

District councillor Brice Lauret, who had rushed to the scene, said the violence was “unacceptable.”

“I can understand anger, but not violence,” he added.

In another area, Fives, the district hall was targeted with stones, its windows broken out, according to Lille city hall, while an elementary school in the neighborhood of Moulins was badly damaged by flames.

There was also “a lot of looting” of shops and supermarkets, it added, saying “very mobile small groups, composed of very young” individuals were striking “everywhere.”

‘Today they are shooting’

The city had beefed up its security pres- ence on Thursday, deploying elite RAID units, a helicopter and police drones after violence broke out the previous night, though the measures appeared to have little deterrent effect.

The first incidents started around 9:00 p.m., in the sector of the central police station, where authorities had prohibited gatherings after calls for a rally went out on social media.

Economists agree it’s none other than reopening the Philippine economy after three years of stagnation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reopening the economy, and leading it toward normalcy from the debilitating lockdowns that were among the longest in the world, has been a priority of the Marcos administration.

It has also started investing in the future by setting the goal of becoming a middle-income status country by the end of its term in 2028.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many global banks were predicting that the Philippines would become a big economy by 2050 and beyond.

The Philippine economy would certainly benefit from what economists call the “demographic sweet spot” or the demographic dividend that comes from having a huge population with one-half of them already part of the labor force.

The Philippines actually has one of

We have to invest more in the education of our youth so that the economy would benefit in the long run the biggest populations in the world, at 12th place with more than 110 million Filipinos. This would be a key ingredient in the country’s economic advance.

The countries enjoying the demographic sweet spot would be among the dominant economies by 2050.

Transforming that advantage into sustained economic growth in the years ahead would require, however, a welleducated work force.

This underscores the importance of upgrading the country’s educational system so that future generations can acquire the necessary knowledge and skills needed for consistent economic growth and improvements in the standard of living of Filipinos.

We have to invest more in the education of our youth so that the economy would benefi t in the long run.

With the country returning to an average annual growth rate of at least 6 percent, the government should further open up the economy through structural reforms and policies that would attract investments both from domestic and foreign sources, cut red tape and facilitate the ease of doing business.

Improving the country’s economic situation remains a priority of his administration, the President himself has said.

“Whatever it is that we have managed to do, there is still a great deal more to do. We have to work smart, and we have to work well, and we have to be very conscious…We have to bear in mind that the international situation has changed, in terms of trade, in terms of geopolitics.

“It is very clear that the most successful economies are those that are agile and resilient. And we have to put the basic elements in place to do that.”