Marine Le Pen and Anne Hidalgo, two women conquering the Elysée

They chose the same day to announce their candidacy for the Presidency of the French Republic. They will do it from two opposite sides of the political spectrum and for neither of them the race for the Elysée comes as a surprise. Anne Hidalgo and Marine Le Pen are ready to challenge Emmanuel Macron.

The first, socialist, mayor of Paris made the announcement from Rouen, Normandy: “I have decided to be a candidate to offer a future to our children, to all our children.” The second is the leader of the Rassemblement National and announced her candidacy during a rally in Frejus, in the south of France: “In these ten years we have become a governing party.”

HIDALGO
As a candidate Anne Hidalgo, 62, has defined herself a French woman born in Spain who in recent years has listened to the French and the French. Her name was Ana, she was less than three years old when her parents left Andalusia and Spain of Francoism. It was 1962. Neither they nor their two daughters spoke French. At fourteen he had French nationality. Raised first in Lyon and then in Paris, she married twice. The first with a college friend with whom she had two children: Mathieu and Elsa. The second with the socialist economist and politician Jean-Marc Germain, with whom he had a son, Arthur.

Graduated in social sciences with a specialization in trade union law, she worked as a labor inspector. At 23 she was one of the very few women in France in this position. Always in the party socialist, has collaborated with left-wing governments since the 1990s. In the new millennium she was elected to the Paris Council, but never to Parliament. She was deputy mayor of the city and then the first mayor of the Ville Lumiere since 2014 with re-election last year.

“I want to start by putting an end to the contempt, the arrogance, the condescension of those who know our lives so badly.” The unveiled attack is on President Macron. Must go through the primary of the party, but the opponent is more than beatable: the mayor of Mans and former Socialist Minister of Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll.

It is no coincidence that he chose Rouen, not Paris, for the announcement. She has been mayor of the capital since 2014 and polls show her too close to the capital and too far from the rest of the country. He chose to apply within days of the release of his book A french woman, A French woman, in which there are her vision and her program: «a decentralized Republic, closer to the citizens, with the citizens». Its program includes fighting inequalities, ecological transition and investments in schools.

These are the foundations of the politics that he has already activated in Paris by focusing on cycle paths instead of cars and the creation of parks. In the city he proposed to increase the share of social housing and keep the ceiling on rents. According to Time magazine, she is among the 100 most influential people of 2020. She was fined by the government for appointing 11 out of 16 women to her cabinet, while the French rule requires the possible prevalence of one gender to be at most 60%.

LE PEN
The name Le Pen has always represented the right in France. Marine, nee Marion Anne, is the third child of the founder of the Front National Jean-Marie Le Pen. She was born on August 5, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. When she is 16, her parents separate and her mother leaves the family. She studied law and practiced as a lawyer before entering politics with her father’s party in the late 1990s. She is elected locally and then to the European parliament. In 2007 she led the political strategy of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s campaign in the presidential elections.

She herself has already been a candidate several times in the elections for the presidency of the Republic since, in 2011, she succeeded, not without family clashes, her father at the helm of the party. She showed up in 2012 and in 2017 she made it to the second round against Macron.

She has been married twice with Franck Chauffroy with whom he had three children, Jehanne, as Joan of Arc, and the twins Louis and Mathilde, and with Éric Iorio. In 2010 she formalized her relationship with the vice president of the Front national Louis Aliot, story that ended in 2019. She, too, as the opponent

In recent interviews he said he was neither right nor left. Its slogan will be Freedoms, cherished freedoms!, freedom, dear freedoms! which is part of the Marseillaise, but also of a song of prisoners in Germany in the years at the turn of the Second World War. Work, sovereignty and identity are the cornerstones of his campaign. In its program there is, among other things, the will to safeguard the purchasing power and nationalization of the motorways.