"The French were particularly indignant at the sight of a handcuffed Mr Strauss-Kahn doing the “perp” walk in New York. Now that the case has been dropped, sympathy for the man could revive. Socialist leaders have already appeared on French television and radio to express their “immense relief” at the end of an “intolerable ordeal”.
Yet the chances are that it will be a good while until Mr Strauss-Kahn can fully participate again in public life. It would be almost impossible for him to run for the presidency, even if the Socialist Party were to change its rules to enable him to do so. The detailed descriptions of the alleged sexual encounter in the New York hotel room are too fresh in voters’ minds. And Ms Diallo has launched a civil suit against him, which does not preclude his return to France but could hang over him for months.
Moreover, Mr Strauss-Kahn faces trouble at home. Tristane Banon, a French writer, has accused him of attempting to rape her in 2003, but there are rumours that this case too might not stack up enough to reach court. In a separate matter, Ms Diallo’s lawyer in France said yesterday that he would file a suit against one of Mr Strauss-Kahn’s political friends for “trying to suborn a witness”.
Further descriptions of a “consensual but clearly brutal” sexual encounter in 2000 with Mr Strauss-Kahn made by Anne Mansouret, Ms Banon’s mother and a Socialist official, add up to just too much information about the bedroom antics even for the famously tolerant French. As Sylvie Kauffman, editor of Le Monde, told 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.”"
Pour l'article au complet:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2011/08/dominique-strauss-kahn
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