The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, launched her candidacy for the French presidency.
Rouen:
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Sunday launched her candidacy for the French presidency, highlighting ecological and social issues, and far-right leader Marine Le Pen set out her vision for the most important job. , as the race to oust his current Emmanuel Macron is picking up pace.
Hidalgo, 62, is one of the few right-wing and left-wing candidates to put the first French woman president.
Macron has not yet confirmed that it will seek a second term, but it is expected to run again.
Polls suggest he and Le Pen would pass the first round of voting in April and Macron would beat Le Pen in the second round, in a 2017 rematch.
Hidalgo is favored to win his Socialist Party nomination later this month, but faces a tough battle to unite the fractured ones behind his candidacy.
He chose the shipyards in the Socialist-led city of Rouen to boost a low-carbon economy and more spending on education, housing and health.
“I want all children in France to have the same opportunities as me,” she said, and credited the French school system with helping her overcome the “class prejudice” she suffered as a child of Spanish immigrants: the her father was an electrician and she a mother, a seamstress, in an urbanization in Lyon.
Hidalgo enters the race as a polarizing figure, whose campaign drew cars from Paris and the city’s ecological city has divided residents.
He emphasized his history as an administration leader who led Paris through a series of crises, from a series of terrorist attacks to the riots of the “yellow vests” of 2018 and 2019 and l fire that engulfed Notre Dame Cathedral.
Macron striker
Shortly after his announcement, anti-immigration and anti-EU Le Pen outlined the main themes of his third presidential campaign in a speech in the southern city of Frejus.
In the typical storm mode, Le Pen told a crowd of supporters that they would clean up “parts of France that have been Talibanized,” a reference to the presence of radical Islamists in some high-rise housing developments.
He also made openings for the thousands of people organizing weekly protests against Covid’s “health pass,” which requires people to show vaccination tests or a negative test to be served in restaurants, catch long-distance trains, and a lot of ‘other services.
Le Pen, who campaigns as a defender of French “freedom,” called it “a disproportionate violation of the right to liberty.”
Currently, polls suggest Hidalgo would get just seven to nine percent in the president’s first round of voting in April if he was chosen to represent the Socialists.
He hopes to increase this score by taking advantage of the growing climate activism of France’s younger generation.
Macron’s “arrogance.”
Both Hidalgo and Le Pen accused Macron of “arrogance” – one of the accusations that underpinned the yellow vest revolt – and stressed his commitment to women’s rights.
Le Pen promised to make the streets safe so that women could walk “at any time of the day or night and in any neighborhood.”
Hidalgo said he would promote gender pay equality.
Le Pen’s combative rhetoric worries his National Rally after his poor performances in the June regional elections.
Analysts have warned of potential voter fatigue with Le Pen after two failed campaigns.
And Le Pen could be hampered by a far-right rival candidacy from controversial television expert and author Eric Zemmour.
It is rumored that Zemmour, who has built a loyal following with diatribes against migration and the Muslim handkerchief, plans to use an upcoming book tour to throw his hat in the ring.
Meanwhile, Macron received a key endorsement from the right: his prime minister Edouard Philippe.
“My support for the president of the republic will be total in 2022,” Philippe told TF1 television on Sunday evening.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)