Avirama Golan

PublishedApril 02nd 2014

        

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor who dared

Although the ​​choice of Anne Hidalgo for mayor of Paris in the second round was expected, it was hard to watch her ​​acceptance speech without being moved to tears. And it's not just because Hidalgo is the first woman in the history of France to stand at the head of its largest city.

Her choice is also inspiring because she is the daughter of immigrants from Spain who fled to France from the fascist regime. She grew up in the multicultural immigrant worker quarter of Vaise in Lyon, and despite this biography (Hidalgo herself believes that is precisely thanks to this biography) she achieved an impressive accomplishment.

Her victory, after a grueling, nerve-wracking and demanding election, was not obvious at all. Hidalgo ran for the party whose head, President Francois Hollande, became its worst obstacle. In addition to all the other difficulties, arising mainly from the national socio-economic crisis, this talented and brilliant politician was forced to run for mayor while behind her the Socialist Party noisily collapsed and lost public trust. And this is the biggest achievement of Hidalgo, which seems even more important from here, in Israel, where the socialist left collapsed long ago and it's unclear if it will ever recover. One should listen carefully her speech in order to remember what the real left is, what its uncompromising values are and who makes the best leader of the left, in bad times as in good.

When the dust settles over the municipal elections, the French may realize they can no longer continue to spin the magic wheel that draws them in time after time. First they are indifferent, then they are too lazy to go to the polls, and after the votes are counted they awake to a strengthened National Front (FN) and other extremist forces, and in the end they sit and analyze the results in sorrow, despair and regret.

Despite it all, Hidalgo managed to form an alliance of the left - that her party leaders failed to activate - and, more importantly, she did not pretend for a minute that she was not a leftist.

What a shame that the party wing to which Hidalgo belongs, headed by Martine Aubry, pushed aside the Socialist Party, and that Hollande, who represents a very mild form of European social-democracy that is mainly characterized by enlightened liberalism but only very distantly by a socialist economic concept of equality, was the one the party chose as a presidential candidate. Aubry seemed too firm, too red, too serious. Hollande, liked but not admired, was still portrayed as sufficiently photogenic in an era, so one thought, that the left is on its deathbed.

And now suddenly, from the most unexpected direction, city after city is paying the price for Hollande's conciliatory policy that is not left and not right. In light of this deep crisis, the city of Paris, headed by Bertrand Delanoe and led energetically by Hidalgo as Deputy Mayor in charge of planning, leads a clear leftist policy that is not ashamed of its values: equal rights in housing and integration of affordable housing in prestige buildings; expansion of the boundaries of "Greater Paris" and an equitable distribution of resources among all quarters; state education for all and opposition to privatization and separation according to ethnic communities; support of all populations, regardless of religion, race, gender and sexual orientation, and above all - solidarity in the deepest sense.

If one listened carefully to what Hidalgo said in her acceptance speech in Paris, one could hear the unmistakable commitment to these values​​, as well as her national commitment to each and every citizen. "Paris is the city of all children," she said, "No matter what their age and their origin. Paris is a city of equality." In the face of wild incitement against immigrants, against Muslims and Jews, such things carry a lot of weight.

Hidalgo's campaign was crowned with the slogan “Paris qui ose” - "a Paris that dares". But the one who really dared was Hidalgo herself, who did not blur messages or recoil from alliances with groups that may be seen as too red or too green for the taste of some voters. Maybe now, the Socialist Party, licking its wounds and looking for an instant savior, will understand that it is better to return to the original ways of the left, instead of trying to please the world. And maybe then, not too long from now, this brave and beautiful girl from San Fernando - who proudly tells of the state school that nurtured her sense of pluralism, who decided to focus on employees and labor relations and never feared talking about equality and implementing it - will make it to the Elysee Palace, named after those same values, with her head held high.

Avirama Golan is an Israeli writer and journalist. She is the Head of the Center for Urbanity and Mediterranean Culture, in the town of Bat Yam.