The French government on Monday survived two no-confidence votes following public outcry over plans to raise the nation’s retirement age.
The votes in the lower chamber of parliament were proposed by MPs who objected President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 - which has sparked riots across France.
National Assembly MPs rejected both motions on Monday, one from the far-right National Rally and the other, more threatening one, from a small centrist group that gathered support across the left.
The first motion, by the centrists, garnered 278 votes, falling short of the 287 needed to pass.
The far-right initiative won just 94 votes.
With the failure of both votes on Monday, the pension bill is considered adopted, but further opposition is inevitable.
The tight result in the first vote - which was won by just nine votes - led some MPs to immediately call for prime minister Elisabeth Borne to resign.
“Only nine votes are missing to bring both the government down and its reform down,” hard-left MP Mathilde Panot said. “The government is already dead in the eyes of the French, it doesn’t have any legitimacy any more.”
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said her group would file a request for the Constitutional Council to examine the bill on Tuesday and possibly censure it.
Rioters have been on the streets of France since Mr Macron ignored the National Assembly last Thursday, so as to bring the new legislation in by presidential decree.
There was a fourth night of violence across France on Sunday, as gangs roamed through the streets of major cities including Paris, burning effigies of the President and senior ministers before police responded with teargas and baton charges.
As the result of the first no-confidence vote was read out on Monday, opposition MPs from the Left-wing France Unbowed party held up printed signs saying “RIP”, while shouting “Resignation! Resignation!”
Numerous politicians had been threatened with the guillotine if they supported President Macron‘s government.
Police said macabre messages had been sent to MPs preparing for the crucial poll.
“I am now receiving death threats,” said Agnes Evren, MP and vice-president of the Republicans party.
She said anonymous tormenters had evoked the guillotining of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette in Paris during the so-called ‘Terror’ that followed the 1789 Revolution.
“These extremist refuse debate - they have no respect for their political adversaries and are openly inspired by the Terror,” Ms Evren Tweeted.
“Do not underestimate the danger any longer. Every threat of this type will now be the subject of a complaint.”
Frederique Meunier, of the Republicans party, said: “It’s as if they want to decapitate us.” Meanwhile Guillaume Gouffier Valente, an MP with Mr Macron’s Renaissance Party, saw a hangman’s sign scrawled outside his office in Vincennes, east of Paris.
“He has since made a formal request to the Ministry of Interior for police protection for colleagues under threat,” said a party spokesman.
Renaissance MP Brigitte Klinkert reported graffiti outside her office reading: “You vote against us, we will remember.”
