Montpellier (AFP)
Anne Hidalgo participates on Tuesday in Montpellier in the parliamentary days of the Socialist Party, a new step towards a candidacy for the presidential election, which some see very close.
Just back from Japan, where she picked up the Paralympic Games flag for Paris 2024, Anne Hidalgo will meet in the afternoon about 80 Socialist deputies and senators, gathered for three days in the Hérault city.
After having assembled in July in Villeurbanne her "French team of mayors and local elected officials", with whom she intends to build her program, Anne Hidalgo had met the socialist activists during the summer days of the PS in August in Blois.
It is now with the parliamentarians of the PS, many of whom are already committed to his cause, that the Parisian councilor will discuss.
The president of the Socialists and Allies group in the National Assembly, Valérie Rabault, and the leader of the Socialists, Ecologists and Republicans group in the Senate, Patrick Kanner, reaffirmed on Monday their support for the mayor of Paris, at the opening of the parliamentary days, in presence of the socialist mayor of Montpellier, Michaël Delafosse.
"I support Anne Hidalgo", declared the member for Tarn-et-Garonne Valérie Rabault, hoping that the "long-distance race" which begins with the parliamentary days gives rise to a left-wing majority in the legislative elections of June 2022, in order to " repair "the" regressions of the five-year term "of Emmanuel Macron.
For the senator and former Minister of Sports Patrick Kanner, one of the most fervent supporters of the candidacy of Anne Hidalgo, this meeting with parliamentarians was "obvious".
"She comes to tell us how she sees her priorities. Then, it will be necessary to transform them into text of law, it is the role of the parliamentarians", he reminds AFP.
Anne Hidalgo has still not formalized her candidacy, expected "in September".
And if the rumors swirl of a possible announcement of candidacy next Sunday, no one comes forward to confirm any date.
"Anne Hidalgo may be a candidate in some time. She has mastered the when and how," explains Patrick Kanner modestly.
- "The match is not played" -
Jean-François Debat, mayor of Bourg-en-Bresse, who should have a role of coordinator in the campaign, believes that the announcement of Anne Hidalgo will intervene "necessarily" before the result of the primary of environmentalists, scheduled for the end of September , so that his candidacy does not appear as "in response" to that of environmentalists.
As for the hypothesis of an accelerated candidacy to counter that of the former socialist Arnaud Montebourg who declared himself Saturday in Clamecy, Mr. Debat, who, like Patrick Kanner, accompanied the mayor of Paris in several trips to France in recent months, sweeps it away with the back of the hand.
"The candidacy of Arnaud Montebourg is not a surprise. It is a way for him to forget that he had said he was giving up politics," said the mayor of Bourg-en-Bresse.
He believes that the former minister of recovery will not go to the end and will end up supporting the mayor of Paris, "by providing a complement".
Other stages still mark out Anne Hidalgo's path: the release of her book "a French woman" on September 15, which "will not be a program book but will speak about her, her convictions and her vision of France ", before the PS congress on September 18 and 19.
An internal vote of socialist activists, promised by the first secretary Olivier Faure, will take place a little after the congress, and will make it possible to distinguish it from its potential competitors, including the mayor of Le Mans Stéphane Le Foll.
Anne Hidalgo, who recently obtained the significant support of the mayor of Lille and former minister Martine Aubry, is currently only credited with seven to 9% of the votes according to the polls, but her support, the boss of the PS Olivier Faure at the head, affirms that "the match is not played".
And Senator Rémi Féraud, close to the mayor of Paris, assures us: Anne Hidalgo is "a beast of the countryside".
© 2021 AFP