Struggling in the polls, Anne Hidalgo does not intend to give up the race for the Elysée.
“In your dreams!”. It is with these words that the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo replied, on Saturday during a meeting in Aubervilliers, to the “prophets of doom” who would like her to “resign herself to the difficulty” of the presidential campaign and give up.
Struggling in the polls, which give her between 2% and 4% of voting intentions, Anne Hidalgo went on the offensive, facing “an incredible coalition (which) has come together to declare this election advance”, she explained in front of more than a thousand activists in Aubervilliers. “They all got into it, to push us aside (…) and whistle the end of the match even before kick-off”, she denounced, evoking “their dream” of an “election without socialists”.
According to her, “to the vindictive chorus of the conservatives, the voices of a part of the left have joined, which claims to be fighting the right but above all dreams of the disappearance of social democracy”, an accusation already made against the rebellious France of Jean-Luc Melenchon.
Read also: Presidential 2022: Anne Hidalgo’s 20 key measures
Faced with “conservatives of all stripes” and “populists of all feathers”, she endeavored to restore the image of her party, defending “those socialists who have beaten them so often, (…), dare to want govern, dare to extend the rights of the exploited”.
She recalled the major reforms carried out by the PS, from the abolition of the death penalty to 35 hours and the fifth week of leave, through “minimum income”, marriage for all or even the agreement of Paris on the climate. “So are we going to give in? (…) Are we going to let our France sink into the throes of an ever more violent liberalism with the middle classes and the working classes, with the youth, or sink into a deadly national-populism ?” “Never,” she shouted.
“I am not afraid”
Without mentioning the popular primary, in which she refuses to participate, she recalled having called for an “honest, open, clear debate” with her left-wing competitors, but “they refused it”. “The page is turned, I will defend our project, the French will decide”, she added, before assuring: “I am not afraid”.
Outlining the main measures of her program presented last week, she notably defended her proposal to increase the minimum wage by 15%, “a measure of justice” and “an economic necessity”.
She deployed her proposals for school, youth, health, housing or even old age, which “should be a social marker of the Macron five-year term, she quipped, but “there is no had a social marker”. In climate matters, she defended “massive public investments” to finance the choice of renewable energies, a “third-party payment for renovation” for housing, or even “the conditioning of all public aid to companies on commitment to strict compliance with social and environmental criteria”.
“We want a fair ecology”
“We don’t just want ecology. We want just ecology,” she insisted.
Faced with the democratic challenge, she recalled her desire to set up the Citizens’ Initiative Referendum, and long highlighted culture, “this powerful lever of collective life”.
“I have the impression unfortunately that it does not hang”, regretted Jean-Pierre Leclerc, activist and 72-year-old retiree. “I do not have the answers, but I am a little sad compared to the time when I supported Mr. François Hollande”.
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