“You are summoned to the Datishow”: lively exchange of arms between Anne Hidalgo and Rachida Dati at the Paris Council

“There is in your attitude, as you demonstrate at each Paris Council, casualness.” The word is out. It is from Rachida Dati, mayor of the 7th arrondissement, who strongly attacked the mayor of the capital Anne Hidalgo during the Paris Council, this Tuesday, November 14.

“It's the same [casualness, Editor's note] which costs you very dearly, so to speak, in the context of your alibi trip to Tahiti, from which we learned again this morning that you benefited from a helicopter so even that you made people believe that you were cycling on a Parisian cycle path,” she continued angrily.

“If you find any trace of a helicopter, let me know because I haven’t seen any trace,” replied the mayor of Paris ironically.

This exchange of arms comes only a few days after the controversy which surrounded Anne Hidalgo's trip to New Caledonia and French Polynesia. If the Parisian councilor was initially supposed to go there to meet local elected officials, visit a cultural center but above all inspect a site which will host the surfing events at the 2024 Olympic Games, she was ultimately unable to... visit the spot. She was thus accused of using this professional trip to visit her family and in particular her daughter, who lives on the island of Raiatea.

“Your insinuations, your permanent attacks, you summoned the press so that there would be a show,” Anne Hidalgo finally lost her temper during the Paris Council, addressing her political rival. “You are, gentlemen and ladies journalists, summoned to the Datishow,” she finally said before being – weakly – applauded. “But the Datishow has calmed down a little, because Madame Dati, she is president of a group which has a radically different vision from ours, she does not support ecology, she does not support social issues,” said -she continued before being booed by the audience.

“And obviously it’s respectable, I respect, I respect,” she insisted. Before ironically: “I completely respect it because the beauty of democracy is that there are differences and projects that confront each other democratically and that voters decide. In this case, they have been deciding outside of what you are offering them for twenty years.”