AFTER HIS arrest and indictment on sex crime charges in May, Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s political career was assumed to be dead and buried.
But as Mr Strauss-Kahn (62) celebrated his liberation from house arrest with his wife Anne Sinclair at an expensive upper east side restaurant on Friday night, then visited the TimeWarner Center and Museum of Modern Art on Saturday afternoon, he contemplated something as miraculous as resurrection.
Back in France, Mr Strauss-Kahn's socialist allies said he might challenge President Nicolas Sarkozy in next April's election after all. Then an opinion poll published yesterday by Le Parisiennewspaper showed that 60 per cent of left-leaning French voters and 49 per cent of the public at large want Mr Strauss-Kahn to return to politics.
The French socialist party has set a July 13th deadline for candidates to register for their primary. Mr Strauss-Kahn is not due back in court until the 18th – too late for him to file as a candidate, if he is cleared of seven counts of sexual assault.
Fifty-one per cent of leftist respondents to Le Parisien’s poll said the socialists should postpone the deadline. If Mr Strauss-Kahn misses the deadline, French rules would allow him to declare his candidacy as an independent until mid-March 2012 for the April 22nd election.
The case against Mr Strauss-Kahn weakened when district attorney Cyrus Vance jnr's office revealed that Nafissatou Diallo, the 32-year-old hotel maid from Guinea who accused him of emerging naked from the bathroom and attacking her, had lied on her US asylum application. The district attorney also added that Ms Diallo has also lied about the sequence of events following the alleged attack and that she had cheated on her income tax returns. The New York Timesreported that she associated with people suspected of drug-dealing and money-laundering.
Mr Vance, son of a former US secretary of state, looks likely to be the first casualty of the reversal in Mr Strauss-Kahn’s fortunes.
Ms Diallo reportedly telephoned her boyfriend, imprisoned in Arizona on charges of possessing 180kg of marijuana, within a day of the alleged attack. Police recorded the conversation.
"She says words to the effect of, 'Don't worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I'm doing'," a law enforcement official told the New York Times.
The New York Posthas published headlines such as "Sleazy Money," "French whine!" "I Seduced and she said Oui Oui" and "Chez Perv; DSK's $50,000 TriBeCa rental" since the Strauss-Kahn case erupted. The tabloid newspaper now claims that Ms Diallo "was doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests."
When Ms Diallo reported the alleged attack on May 14th, the maid claimed she did not know who Mr Strauss-Kahn was. But the New York Postreported yesterday that a photograph in the room identified him as an important guest. Mr Strauss-Kahn allegedly refused her demand that she be paid for performing oral sex with him. His attorneys admit that a sexual encounter took place, but claim it was consensual.
Opinion pieces in the New York Timesand Washington Postraised the possibility that Mr Strauss-Kahn could in fact be guilty of assaulting Ms Diallo. But he is likely to be cleared because her credibility as a witness has been damaged. The district attorney was required by law to disclose the information that destroyed his own case.
In an opinion piece the New York Postclimbed down from its earlier attacks on Mr Strauss-Kahn, saying: "It turns out [he] is likely not a violent sex fiend" and predicting that he may be elected president "of that sexist country" (France).
Despite the favourable French opinion poll, two factors work against Mr Strauss-Kahn's triumphant return to French politics. As Sylvie Kauffmann, 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." From henceforth, she added, "we're back to the Bill Clinton problem". Moreover, the case has highlighted what a life of luxury Mr Strauss-Kahn and the his wife lead.
Their house in Georgetown, with swimming pool, was valued at $5 million (€3.44 million) for bond.