Mayor of Paris Ann Hidalgo announced on Sunday her bid to take part in the French Presidential race next April. Hidalgo"s announcement was reported by local French media, and the candidate is the first woman mayor of Paris and a member of the Socialist Party. The French Presidential election will be held over several rounds with the first occurring on April 10, 2022, while the second on April 24, 2022. Hidalgo’s announcement adds one more candidate to a growing list of challengers to centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron. Speaking in the northwestern city of Rouen, Hidalgo, who has been mayor of Paris since 2014 said: "I have decided to be a candidate for the presidency of the French Republic." The 62-year-old daughter of Spanish immigrants who fled Francisco Franco"s dictatorship is the hot favorite to win the nomination of the Socialist party. She enters the race as a polarizing figure whose campaign to squeeze cars out of Paris and make the city greener has divided residents of the capital. She credited her rise from humble beginnings in a housing estate in the southern city of Lyon — her father was an electrician and her mother a seamstress — as testament of the power of France to help children overcome "class prejudice". Warning of growing inequality, she said: "the Republican model is disintegrating before our eyes". She said one of her top priorities would be to transform France into a low-carbon economy. Macron has yet to announce a run for a second term but he is widely expected to do so. The election is expected to come down to another duel between him and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whom Macron defeated in 2017. Minutes after Hidalgo"s announcement, Le Pen kickstarted her campaign in the southern city of Frejus. For her third presidential bid the anti-immigration Le Pen, 53, has styled herself the guarantor of French "liberty". — Agencies