Dominique Strauss-Kahn

I suppose it is necessary to say something about the bombshell that dropped in New York last Saturday with the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), French head of the International Monetary Fund.

I leave the eventual resolution of this senseless and tragic affair to the lawyers and prosecutors of New York City.

But, I believe we can all have sympathy for the victim, no matter the outcome, because she was assaulted, as DSK has today admitted, and she is apparently an immigrant from Senegal, 32 years old, and working her way through life as a single parent with a teenage child. She has been brave, and I salute her for her courage.

As for DSK, he is surely the best example we’ve had in many years of perfect self-destruction. He is charged with attempted rape, criminal sexual acts, sexual abuse, forcible touching and false imprisonment.

While the leaders of the French political left continue to ask for patience and withholding of judgment, it is clear they have been placed in a quandary that will probably make it impossible for them to win the French 2012 presidential election, as was forecast with DSK as their candidate. Their other on-the-air pastime is to attack the American justice system - for doing its job in protecting American citizens, one presumes.

The French conservatives, led by President Sarkozy, have been amazingly prudent, not using the affair for political ends. Today, Sarkozy and the French Prime Minister called again for unity, decorum and getting on with the job of governing France.

Last night on a French TV program that focuses on politics and is panelled by senior French journalists and pollsters, the mood was somber. They were surprising in their condemnation of DSK, because in France as elsewhere journalists tend to be left-leaning.  

To summarize their conclusions :

1. DSK is finished politically.

2. The best chance for the left is in Francois Holland, a former Socialist Party president and candidate for the 2012 election, or Segolene Royal, who lost to Sarkozy in 2007, both of whom have always separated themselves from DSK and gone their own ways toward 2012.

3. Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party needs to be quiet, not use the affair politically, and hope that French voters don’t paint all politicians with the DSK brush and stay away from the voting booths in hoards.

4. The real winner in all this is the extreme right, the Front National, already gaining ground toward 2012, whose candidate, Marine le Pen, will benefit from her party’s traditional stance against the “political elite” that rules France without much thought for ordinary citizens. If French voters don’t turn out in normal numbers, le Pen could pull off an historic upset.