Gwynne Dyer: A tale of sex, silence and one man’s dramatic downfall that may alter the fate of a nation

YOU couldn’t fall farther or faster than Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He was not only the head of the International Monetary Fund, until last weekend, he was almost certainly within a year of being elected president of France. Then he found himself in a small cell in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island prison, initially denied bail and waiting for a grand jury hearing which finally indicted him for attempted rape, a criminal sexual act, and unlawful imprisonment.

It is not possible to know for sure what happened in his $3,000-a-day luxury suite in the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan at lunchtime on May 14, but the New York police took a chambermaid’s allegations of attempted rape seriously enough to remove Strauss-Kahn from an Air France aircraft minutes before it took off for Paris that afternoon.

Now, after he finally tendered his resignation, the IMF is headless, and the French presidential race is transformed. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown dreams of an unlikely return to global politics as the new head of the IMF – although it would be more of a nightmare for David Cameron.

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Strauss-Kahn – or DSK, as he is known to the French media – is finished politically no matter what happens next. The events in New York have finally made the French media break their silence about his private behaviour, and what has come out has been damning.

The French media routinely ignore the kind of sexual liaisons that would ruin a politician’s career if they became known in a more puritanical country like the US. But DSK, it has become clear, is not just your average libertine.

In a recent interview, Strauss-Kahn himself said that he faced three difficulties if he were to run for president: “Money, women and the fact I am Jewish.” But the money, which comes from his heiress wife, didn’t really put many people off, and although everybody knew he was Jewish he was still the most popular presidential candidate by far. (France’s first Jewish leader was Leon Blum, 75 years ago.)

It is neither of these that has done for him but, rather, Strauss-Kahn’s behaviour towards women. Even if he is found innocent in the New York incident, he now also faces the claim that he tried to rape Tristane Banon, a novelist and journalist, in 2002.

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At the time, Banon was persuaded not to pursue the issue by her mother, Anne Mansouret, a senior figure in the Socialist Party who saw DSK as a rising star in the party. He was also a family friend. But Mansouret supports her daughter’s claim that Strauss-Kahn attacked her, acting, as Banon puts it, “like a chimpanzee”. None of this would be getting much publicity if Dominique Strauss- Kahn were just another French businessman arrested abroad. Even if he were just the head of the IMF, it would be a one-day wonder. But DSK was the favourite to win the Socialist nomination for the presidency of France, and then to trounce the unpopular Right-wing incumbent, President Nicolas Sarkozy, in the elections next spring.

His departure from the race means that Sarkozy, despite having the lowest approval rating for any French president ever, could yet snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Here’s how it could happen.

The French Left, with no single strong candidate like DSK to unite behind, splits and puts up several rival candidates for the presidency. Something similar happened in 2002. With the Left-wing vote hopelessly split, the leading two parties in the first round of voting next April are Sarkozy’s Right-wing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the ultra-Right-wing National Front – that also happened in 2002.

Neither the UMP nor the National Front has won even 20 per cent of the vote, but as the two leading parties they would go through to the second round of voting in May. And since the great majority of French people loathe the National Front and think it unworthy of office, they hold their noses and vote for Sarkozy, who wins 80 per cent of the vote despite being the least popular French president in history.

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That’s almost exactly what happened in 2002, when another Right-wing president, Jacques Chirac, who was widely accused of corruption, won a second term in a run-off against the National Front’s founder and then leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen. One of the posters in the second round of voting that time simply read: “Vote for the Crook, Not the Fascist!”

Similarly, Sarkozy may end up in a run-off against Le Pen’s daughter Marine, who now leads the National Front. All the polls indicate that she could not possibly win such a contest. DSK’s fall may mean Sarkozy’s survival – which is why more than half of the French, and 70 per cent of French socialists, believe Strauss-Kahn has been the victim of a plot.

That would not necessarily mean he is innocent. His track record with women – which includes three wives and dozens of affairs – is well known, but in our present state of knowledge, it’s simply not possible to say with confidence what happened in that New York hotel room, or why. But it’s pretty safe to say that Sarkozy will be the biggest beneficiary.

Gwynne Dyer is a foreign affairs specialist whose articles are published in 45 countries.