There is Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, and Anne Hidalgo, candidate. On a visit to France on Monday March 2, former Brazilian President Lula da Silva met the two. First at city hall. The socialist mayor organized an official ceremony to give her guest honorary citizenship of the city. "Paris will always stand alongside those whose rights are not respected" , certified Anne Hidalgo.
Read also: Lula da Silva: "The Bolsonaro government, a considerable risk for Brazil"
As a candidate in the 2018 presidential election, Lula was arrested and imprisoned for corruption. He was released on November 8, a year and a half later, after appealing. Many within the French left denounced a political operation to prevent it from winning the election.
"Several questions arise"
After this first meeting in the halls of the town hall, Anne Hidalgo then invited Lula to her meeting, at the Théâtre du Gymnase. He was also accompanied by Dilma Rousseff, also a former president (also convicted of corruption), and Fernando Haddad, the former mayor of São Paulo. At the podium, Lula greeted the outgoing candidate, calling her in particular "a revolutionary woman" .
Informed of these two events, the camp of Agnes Buzyn, the LREM candidate, denounced an unwelcome “mixture of genres” . "Several questions arise: does former President Lula come to Paris to receive an award from the City in exchange for participating in one of your campaign meetings?" asked Marie-Laure Harel, spokesperson for Agnès Buzyn, in a press release signed by a dozen elected LREM Parisians. " We would like, as elected members of the Paris Council, to be assured that there has been no confusion as to the resources committed by the City for the organization and communication linked to this event ", a she also claimed. "Using resources from the town hall for the benefit of a campaign would be completely against the law," said the macronist.
"Anger. Lula Citizen of Honor by Anne Hidalgo: event paid for by the public money of Parisians (value: more than € 30,000) in the middle of the municipal campaign ", also indignant on Twitter the deputy and former Secretary of State for Digital, Mounir Mahjoubi.
Contacted by BFMTV, the town hall of Paris ensures that the former Brazilian head of state came at his expense. During her trip to France on Monday, Lula also met François Hollande, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Olivier Faure.
