Just before taking off for the West Indies, Friday February 11, even as she continues to nose dive dangerously in the polls, Anne Hidalgo conceded: « It’s going to make me crazy. » Fill up on the sun, relentlessly decline the Coué method of possible victory under the radiant auspices of Guadeloupe, then Martinique. It is in an anything but hostile political environment, guided by the local socialist federations, that the candidate has just spent four days, without ever having time to swim in the waves, but campaigning, far, very far, from metropolitan gloom, weighed down by polls condemning her to play a role as an extra in the first round of the presidential election.
Far from the national media epicenter, everything seems much more peaceful, more relaxed, so much easier. « For four days, I have once more the proof of his incredible tenacity. We made an oath: we will go all the way. Whatever happens “, says Patrick Kanner, the boss of the socialist senators, present in the delegation. Seen from the West Indies, “This campaign is ugly, says Anne Hidalgo. It looks more and more like a repugnant political show. It is better to be a negationist fascist than a responsible left woman who carries a project of democratic transformation. It is time to talk regarding the substance, regarding what worries the French: the economic and social crisis, the ecological transition and the need for democracy. »
Indestructible, she satisfied the ordinary of a candidate who starts the 35e mile of a self-inflicted political marathon. In Guadeloupe, marked by the crisis due to Covid-19, and still under a state of health emergency and under curfew, she met a host of elected officials, representatives of the local Medef, who seemed impressed by its serious. She spoke with the director of the Pointe-à-Pitre University Hospital, who had been attacked by antivaccines. She had lunch with organic farmers, dined with influential women, without drinking a drop of rum. At Memorial ACTe, the museum dedicated to slavery in Pointe-à-Pitre, she said: “At this time when questions of identity occupy the debates, the overseas territories are sentinels and antibodies to what is undermining our Republic. »
Try to convince
In Martinique, she embarked on the “Sargator”, a barge designed for collecting sargassum, these toxic algae which proliferate on the coast of the Antilles. In the spray, she denounced “climate inaction” by Emmanuel Macron, and suggested “the creation of an international criminal tribunal and the crime of ecocide”. She visited the house of Aimé Césaire, the cantor of negritude, and the covered market of Fort-de-France, where French tourists took selfies with the presidential candidate, while Martiniquais rather recognized the mayor of Paris. Everywhere, she tried to convince, with industrial odysseys and « utilities that needed fixing ». « These trips nourish her project and reinforce her: she knows that she is right to be there », assures Jean-Marc Germain, husband of Anne Hidalgo and former socialist deputy, of the trip too.
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