Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said she plans to rally left-wing allies to fight President Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 presidential election.
“I am laying the foundation of a movement that I want to gather people and make proposals to the French,” Hidalgo told Europe 1 radio on Sunday.
The presidential election is scheduled for April next year, and current polls show that far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is Macron’s main rival. France also has regional elections in June, although the government has warned they will only take place if the health context permits.
While polls so far have not been encouraging to the Socialist mayor of Paris, with less than 10% of voting intentions in the first round of elections, a recent poll showed she could make it to the second round if she could rally other parties. on the left and the Greens, who plan to flee with their own candidate.
Amid criticism of his handling of the coronavirus crisis, Macron’s popularity fell 4 percentage points in March from a month earlier, with 37% of people saying they are satisfied with the president, according to a IFOP poll for the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche. Macron didn’t say he would run again, but his teams are already working towards his reelection.
Paris and about a third of the country have been closed again since Saturday, encouraging open and outdoor activities for schools, but some non-essentials have been closed. The complex rules have fueled confusion among citizens and have generated complaints from store owners that are considered non-essential.
Government criticized
The head of the Medef business lobby on Saturday criticized the government for what he called the “prosecution” of companies forced to close. Hidalgo joined the chorus of criticism and condemned the government’s lack of transparency in dealing with the pandemic, with the main choices made only by a handful of ministers during so-called “cabinet meetings”.
Yet the popularity of Macron, who said a year ago that France was “at war” with the virus, is still higher than his predecessors, the socialist Francois Hollande and the right-wing Nicolas Sarkozy, at the same point in their mandates, according to the Ifop. poll.