Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said she plans to bring together leftist allies to run against President Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 presidential election.
“I am laying the foundations for a movement to bring people together and make proposals to the French,” Hidalgo told Europe 1 radio on Sunday.
Presidential elections are scheduled for April next year, and current polls show far-right candidate Marine Le Pen as Macron’s main rival. France also has regional elections in June, although the government has warned that they will only happen if the health context allows.
Although polls have not been encouraging so far for the socialist mayor of Paris, with less than 10% of voting intentions in the first round, a recent poll showed that she could reach the second round if she managed to bring together other parties on the left and the green ones , who plan to compete with their own candidate.
Amid criticism of how to deal with the coronavirus crisis, Macron’s popularity rate fell by 4 percentage points in March from the previous month, with 37% of people saying they were satisfied with the president, according to one IFOP research for the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche. Macron did not say he would run again, but his teams are already working on his re-election.
Paris and about a third of the country have been under a new blockade since Saturday, with schools open and outdoor activities encouraged, but some non-essential businesses closed. The complex rules created confusion among citizens and brought complaints from store owners considered non-essential.
Criticized by the government
The head of the corporate lobby, Medef, criticized the government on Saturday for what he called a “persecution” of companies forced to close. Hidalgo joined the chorus of criticism and criticized the government’s lack of transparency when it comes to dealing with the pandemic, with important choices made only by a handful of ministers during what is called “defense cabinet meetings”.
Still, the popularity of Macron, who a year ago said France was “at war” with the virus, is still greater than his predecessors, socialist François Hollande and right-wing Nicolas Sarkozy, at the same point in their terms, according to the Ifop Poll.