France's Socialists and the international financial community grappled for a future without Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Tuesday after the IMF chief was remanded in a New York prison on attempted rape charges. Many Socialist leaders voiced outrage at the way the head of the International Monetary Fund, a frontrunner for the French presidency, had been paraded handcuffed and unshaven by US police before he has a chance to defend himself in court.
Strauss-Kahn was arrested aboard an Air France plane on Saturday and charged with a sexual assault on a chambermaid at a luxury Manhattan hotel. He denies the accusations. A judge denied him bail on Monday, remanding him to the city's grim Rikers Island jail, where he spent the night. An emergency Socialist leadership meeting in Paris staged a rare show of unity amid consternation over the probable loss of the centre-left's most popular contender to unseat conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in next April's election.
"Unity, responsibility, combativity, these are the three words which came up the most this morning," Socialist party leader Martine Aubry told reporters after the session. "There was emotion, of course, and the shock we all feel, but it is our responsibility to be up to the task," she said. Strauss-Kahn has neither resigned from the Washington-based IMF nor dropped out of the French race so far, but he seems bound to be sidelined by a prolonged legal case. Sarkozy, whose approval ratings had slumped to a record low of 20 percent, received another campaign boost with news that his wife, singer and former model Carla Bruni, is expecting a child later this year.
The president's father confirmed the widespread rumours to German newspaper Bild and a visibly pregnant Bruni appeared in public on Tuesday, although Sarkozy's office declined comment on a matter it said concerned his private life. Sarkozy urged centre-right lawmakers at a closed-door breakfast to show "restraint and dignity" and refrain from comment on the Strauss-Kahn case, participants said.
The Socialists agreed they would not change the selection timetable, which calls for candidates to register by July 13 for a primary election to be held in October. French politicians and some commentators voiced shock and anger at the judge's decision to refuse Strauss-Kahn bail. Former Culture Minister Jack Lang described the treatment as a "lynching" that had "provoked horror and aroused disgust".
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