Thursday, August 25, 2011

ECONOMIST Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Free at last

But what sort of reception can he expect in France?

Aug 27th 2011 | PARIS | from the print edition

The great seducer prepares to fly home

THREE months ago, he was—briefly—in a New York jail, in solitary detention and on suicide watch. Today, in a drama with more twists than a French plait, he has been given back his passport and his freedom. A New York judge’s decision on August 23rd to accept the state prosecutors’ request to drop charges of attempted rape and sexual assault against Dominique Strauss-Kahn opens the way for the former managing director of the IMF to return to France. Whether he can return to public life is less clear.

French Socialist leaders, who face a primary vote in October ahead of next spring’s presidential election (seeCharlemagne), fell over themselves to welcome their party colleague’s freedom. It was “an immense relief” declared Martine Aubry, mayor of Lille and one presidential aspirant. François Hollande, another hopeful, said he was “delighted” to see the end of “an intolerable ordeal”.

Some in France are scandalised that the American judicial system could wreck the professional life of a man convicted of no crime. Many were sceptical about the accusations from the start: soon after Mr Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in May, which occurred when he seemed well placed to beat President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s election, 57% said in a poll they thought it was part of a conspiracy. The French were indignant at the sight of a handcuffed Mr Strauss-Kahn doing the “perp walk”. Bernard-Henri Lévy, a celebrity intellectual, called it “pornographic”.

Yet many French people, particularly women, are not sure that they like the look of the character who has emerged in recent months. Contrary to the claims of some Socialist figures, Mr Strauss-Kahn has not been cleared. The case was dismissed because prosecutors concluded that they could not expect to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that a sexual assault took place. They blamed the “untruthfulness” of Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel maid who made the charges.

But prosecutors are unequivocal that the evidence “conclusively establishes that the defendant engaged in a sexual encounter with the complainant”. In a 25-page document they describe, in excruciating detail, a “hurried sexual encounter” with the maid, which “was over in approximately seven to nine minutes”. “It wasn’t a crime, that’s all,” Benjamin Brafman, one of Mr Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers, told Le Parisien, a newspaper.

This alone has damaged Mr Strauss-Kahn’s reputation. A poll conducted last week, when it already seemed likely that the case would collapse, gave him a 28% approval rating, down from 52% in April, and a four-point drop on the previous month. It could be a while before he can fully participate in public life again. It is “undoubtedly too late” for him to run for the presidency, according to Gaël Sliman of BVA, a pollster, even if the Socialist Party were to change its rules to enable him to do so. The published details of the sexual encounter in the New York hotel room, not to mention the evidence of his fabulously wealthy lifestyle, are too fresh in voters’ minds.

Moreover, Mr Strauss-Kahn’s legal troubles are not over. Ms Diallo has launched a civil case against him. In France Tristane Banon, a writer, has filed charges against him for attempted rape in 2003. Separately, Ms Diallo’s lawyer in France launched a suit this week against one of Mr Strauss-Kahn’s political friends for trying to suborn a witness in the Paris suburb where he was once mayor. More claims of a “consensual but clearly brutal” sexual episode with Mr Strauss-Kahn in 2000, made recently by Anne Mansouret, Ms Banon’s mother and a Socialist official, add up to too much information about his bedroom antics, even for the famously tolerant French. As Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of Le Monde, put it to the New York Times, “he’s still a guy who had a sexual encounter with a maid at noon in a luxury suite before having lunch with his daughter and flying back to his wife.”

The best Mr Strauss-Kahn may be able to hope for is to play a role in the upcoming election campaign as an economic elder statesman, at a time when the party’s inexperience in dealing with a financial crisis is only too apparent. Public opinion might be more willing to welcome him back were he to offer some sort of confessional explanation once home in France. This could even open the way to a senior ministerial job in a Socialist government next year, should there be one.

In the short run, though, Mr Strauss-Kahn will return to find his natural ally, Ms Aubry, running far behind Mr Hollande in the primary polls. The immediate question will be whether he chooses to endorse any of the primary candidates ahead of the October vote—and whether any of them would consider it an electoral asset if he did.

from the print edition | Europe