Strauss-Kahn pitches for rehabilitation in TV interview

Former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn took the first steps towards reviving his apparently shattered career on Sunday evening in a primetime television interview watched by 13 million people. But, while friends hailed his “moral stature”, critics and much of the public do not seem to have been convinced by his performance.

Reuters/TF1/Ho

Both former culture minister Jack Lang and Socialist MP Jean-Marie Le Guen declared themselves “proud to be his friend” after Strauss-Kahn apologised to his wife and the French people, admitted “moral failing” in having sex with his accuser Nafissatou Diallo but denied that he tried to rape her in New York’s Sofitel hotel on 15 May.

“He once again revealed his high moral and intellectual stature, which I never doubted, personally,” enthused Lang.

But fellow-Socialist Ségolène Royal, who hopes to be the party’s presidential candidate, said it was time to turn the page. The ex-IMF chief, who on Sunday admitted that he would have liked the president's job himself, would not be part of any government she might form, she indicated.

There was no immediate reaction from the two politicians most likely to win the party nomination, Martine Aubry and François Hollande.

Aubry may have mixed feelings about the tribute Strauss-Kahn paid to her discretion during his travails, especially since he admitted that the two had a pact not to stand against each other during the party primaries.

It’s a “poisoned chalice” which makes her look like the fall-back option, according to weekly magazine Le Point, while MP Bruno Le Roux, a supporter of Aubry’s main rival Hollande, commented, “At least we know who should have been and who wanted to be candidate in this pact.”

Members of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP were predictably scathing, particularly about Strauss-Kahn’s hint that the accusations could have been part of a plot against him.

“I cannot accept innuendo,” stormed UMP general secretary Jean-François Copé. “It’s really shocking that the idea of a plot has been added on top everything else we’ve been through.”

That did not deter Le Guen from telling RFI that additional charges brought by French writer Tristane Banon have been “deliberately organised … to try and denigrate Dominique Strauss-Kahn”.

French feminists were not impressed, either.

Magali de Haass of Osez le féminisme (Dare to be feminist) declared that the broadcast was a stage-managed public relations exercise, while the deliberately provocative La Barbe (The Beard) group picketed the broadcast, shouting the questions they would liked to have been put, including “How do you seduce a woman in nine minutes?”

The fact that the interviewer, Claire Chazal, is a personal friend of Strauss-Kahn’s wife, Anne Sinclair, had already excited comment before the broadcast and she could not be accused of giving Strauss-Kahn a rough ride.

As Strauss-Kahn brandished the New York prosecutor’s report that led to the case being dropped and claimed that it completely exonerated him, she gave no indication of having read it.

The report brands Diallo a liar because of her contradictory accounts of what happened immediately after the alleged assault and of events not directly related to it, notably a false claim of rape in her asylum application to the US.

But it says that these falsehoods “leave us unable to credit her version of events beyond a reasonable doubt, whatever the truth may be about the encounter between the complainant and the defendant” – not quite the ringing endorsement Strauss-Kahn claimed on Sunday.

Nor, when Strauss-Kahn laid into Diallo as a completely discredited gold-digger, did Chazal point out that the hotel maid still has enough confidence in her case to bring a civil action.

French newspapers report many negative reactions to the interview.

Uncommitted viewers may also have been puzzled by the last few minutes when Chazal abruptly passed from the former IMF chief’s troubles to those of Greece and the eurozone.

Strauss-Kahn was immediately transformed from a penitent husband and contrite presidential candidate manqué to an animated, confident technocrat. A sign of his intellect and commitment, his allies would undoubtedly say, but also an indication that, so far as he is concerned, his career is far from over.