Paris: Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Socialist Paris, has tried to turn the capital of France with the Crusades against the car but now faces a more difficult challenge to expand its profiles nationally to become France’s first female president.
Hidalgo, 62, was a virtual unknown seven years ago when he replaced his former mentor and boss, Bertrand Delanoe, as Mayor of Paris – the position seen as a stepping stone to the preservation seat.
The former workforce inspector was reserved, was dismissed by critics as “apparatchik”, struggling to emerge from his shadow.
But Hidalgo, which grew on housing plantations near Lyon in the Spanish immigrant family who escaped from the rules of Francisco dictator when he was two years old, accustomed to being underestimated.
Responding to a poll that showed his victory between seven and nine percent of the votes for the President, he told Paris Match Magazine last month: “My whole life is wrong.” “As a daughter of workers and tailors who do not attend elite school, I have no chance to become the Mayor of Paris,” he said.
Since winning the Mayor’s office in 2014, he had to direct the city through many crises, from a series of terror attacks to the uprising of “Yellow Vest” 2018 and 2019 and fire which almost destroyed the Notre-Dame Cathedral.
In an interview in March 2020 with the Guardian newspaper, he described his experience “like driving a catamaran in a almost permanent 7-9 wind force”.
But his first term as Paris Supremo – Hidalgo easily won the re-election in 2020 – maybe would be remembered for battle on his decision to stuff the road that was busy running along the right edge of Seine, and the launch of a bicycle sharing scheme.
Hidalgo did not make bones about his anti-car attitude.
Naysayers, he said in 2016, was in “complete denial of climate emergency” which had brought nearly 200 shared countries in Paris a year earlier to combat global warming.
But not long after one controversy died than the others flared up.
The critics accused him of failing to be tough at small crimes, letting mouse flocks attack public parks, and generally allow the most visited cities to be dirty and unsightly.
Residents use the #saccageparis hashtag (Paris waste) to post pictures of garbage accumulates on the streets, from a dilapidated public bench and scooter dumped on the sidewalk, between other pain.
Hidalgo has blamed the chaos at the lack of civilian spirit and accused the critics to install a campaign.
Responding to the accusation of authoritarianism in the 2018 “Respirer” (breathing) book (breathing), the mother of three commented: “What travel to authority to a man becomes an authoritarianism in a woman.” Among his achievements he referred to the cycling revolution, caused by the doubling of the Paris cycle line network since 2015.
Regardless of the disputed Hidalgo Heritage has emerged as one of a few numbers capable of integrating the environmental platform.
“Through his perseverance and the way he has managed the biggest French city, he has shown that he can become one,” said the leader of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure in June.
“And maybe the time for a woman also comes.” Hidalgo also believes this case to have a woman as president.
He was not the only woman who looked at the Elysee Palace – a leader far right sea Le Pen and middle right politician, Valerie Pecree, also threw their hats into the ring.
It alluded to record the low level of selection of voter in the recent election, Hidalgo said: “A woman can change the relationship (from France) with the ruling people.”