The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, will be a presidential candidate | Socialist politics accuses Emmanuel Macron of “dividing like never before” the French people

Paris mayor, socialist Anne Hidalgo, announced her candidacy for the 2022 presidential elections in France with strong criticism against the current president, Emmanuel Macron, whom he accused of “dividing the people like never before”. Hidalgo launched this Sunday in the presidential race with the promise of rebuilding equal opportunities which allowed her to be what she is, but with very limited prospects in a a diminished and fragmented left.

“I have humbly decided to be a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic”Hidalgo, 62, said in a 20-minute speech at the river port of Rouen, about 135 kilometers northwest of Paris. The official, who in 2020 was re-elected mayor of the capital, said that Macron “has divided the French like never before,” worsened “social problems and” turned his back on ecology “, he therefore called for an end to the president’s “arrogance and contempt”.

“I came to talk to you about France. About me, a Frenchwoman born in Spain, who arrived in our country at the age of two, who grew up in Lyon in a working-class district”Hidalgo underlined before naming his father, “a worker of the shipyards of Cadiz”, his mother, seamstress, and his grandfather, condemned to death by a Francoist military court which transmitted to his son “the love of the France”. This 62-year-old Franco-Spanish, head of the City of Paris since 2014, says she is worried about her adopted country because “the republican model is falling apart and with it the protections it has built throughout our history. ”

The head of the government of Paris is not the only politician of the Socialist Party (PS) to run for the presidential seat, since the former minister Stephane Le Foll announced the same intentions. Outside the PS, several left or center-left personalities have expressed their desire to run for president, such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La Francia Insoumisa), the ecologist Yannick Jadot or the communist Fabien Roussel. However, none of these candidates are currently standing with the possibility of going to the second round according to the latest polls.