PARIS – Forced out of his job as leader of the IMF to face sexual assault charges, Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s political allies are hoping he can still return to French politics as a major prospect in next year’s race for the presidency.
Strauss-Kahn’s world changed dramatically Friday when a New York judge freed him without bail from a particularly constraining, and financially onerous, house arrest after prosecutors stepped forward with a list of lies from the accuser, a housekeeper in a luxury Manhattan hotel.
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With the woman’s credibility suddenly in doubt, Strauss-Kahn quickly regained his aura as a leader even though charges were neither dropped nor reduced or his passport returned.
REVERSAL OF FORTUNES
His sudden change of fortunes jolted his struggling Socialist Party, regalvanizing allies who had hoped to put Strauss-Kahn forward as the party’s presidential candidate against unpopular conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in elections next April and May.
Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry had stepped reluctantly forward to fill Strauss-Kahn’s shoes as potential candidate — to be decided in a party primary.
However, were he found innocent tomorrow, the New York case and his past in France could come back to haunt the 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn.
Before his arrest, Strauss-Kahn led popularity polls looking ahead to the race. His solid stature, silver hair and intelligence matched the image many French had of their next president.
But on May 14, Strauss-Kahn was pulled from an Air France plane in New York that was to take him to meetings with European leaders. To the shock of France, he was booked and walked the next day from a Harlem police station before a bevy of international photographers — handcuffed, rumpled and bleary-eyed.
Just as abruptly, hope is being restored to Socialist allies and friends who have always insisted he was incapable of violent assault and could still be the party’s savior.
Strauss-Kahn and his wife, Anne Sinclair, looked every bit the power couple in court Friday — the wife sporting a jaunty white jacket and the husband a light blue tie.
“This is a great step forward and a hope that is opening up,” Michele Sabban, a Socialist who has been among the most vocal backers of Strauss-Kahn, said on BFM TV.
She asked for a “pause of decency” in the Socialist Party primary process to choose a candidate, just in case Strauss-Kahn’s case moves forward quickly and he is suddenly found innocent.
FATE STILL MURKY
And, in a sign of just how deeply the latest development in New York is affecting politics in France, Strauss-Kahn’s main Socialist rival, Francois Hollande, said he would be willing to put the brakes on the process. Socialist Party leader hopefuls are to declare themselves by July 13, with voting for an official candidate in October.
“I’m completely prepared for the date to be postponed till the end of August so that there be no reserves, no restrictions,” Hollande told France-Info radio.
There has been no comment from Sarkozy, who has remained silent throughout the ordeal, widely regarded as an astute political strategy.
In fact, the fate of Strauss-Kahn is as murky as ever. His next court appearance is set for July 18.
Were he ultimately found innocent, he would likely emerge a different man.
“His image has changed … The French didn’t really know him,” said Bruno Cautres, a political analyst with Cevipof, the think tank linked to France’s prestigious university Science Po.
While Strauss-Kahn once served as finance minister, his popularity was based largely on his international image, Cautres said. With his arrest, information about his past has surfaced, including his reputation as a skirt-chaser.
“It’s (joined) with his rapport with money. We know he is very, very rich,” Cautres said. “The image has been tarnished.”
“It would be very, very difficult, almost impossible, for him” to regain the stature he once held, Cautres said by telephone.
IMAGE TARNISHED
Strauss-Kahn owes his great wealth to his wife, once France’s top political talk show host. She was able to post a total of $6 million in cash bail and bond for her husband — bail free as of Friday.
However, back in France another case could be awaiting. A young writer, Tristane Banon, who claimed she was attacked by Strauss-Kahn during a 2002 interview in a Paris apartment, has said through her lawyer that she would not become part of the New York proceedings but could air her own case later on French soil.
Isabelle Raul Duval, a lawyer dining at a cafe near Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, expressed doubt that Strauss-Kahn could emerge unscathed from the New York case even if found innocent.
“When you want to be the president of the Republic, you have to change your lifestyle as well a bit,” she said in an interview with Associated Press Television News. “I think that, anyway, his image is a bit broken.”
Former Socialist President Francois Mitterrand never suffered politically from his reputation as a womanizer, but Cautres notes that information was not widely known until after he took office in 1981 and “he showed he was a good president.”
Mitterrand, in office for 14 years, had a child out of wedlock but revealed that secret only on national television, while ill with cancer.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Strauss-Kahn’s French attorney, Jean Veil, while not corroborating a revived candidacy, said on TF1 TV that while the charges remain, after Friday’s developments “no one can say that next week there will not be more revelations.”
A letter from the New York District Attorney’s office to Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys revealed a series of lies by the alleged victim. Those listed centered on lies about her background of political persecution and gang rape in her native Guinea, in west Africa, to obtain U.S. asylum, and, in the current case, how she spent her time just after the alleged incident at the Manhattan Sofitel where she worked.
At a news conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon called for respect for the presumption of innocence.
“We must wait calmly for American justice to do its work,” Fillon said. “I think that’s the only way to behave in this affair.”
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