UK Edition
Could Dominique Strauss-Kahn be about to make political comeback in France?
He was tipped to become the president of France until a lurid sex scandal turned him into a pariah. Even his wife threw him out.
But now Dominique Strauss-Kahn, after sharing a stage this week with Emmanuel Macron and François Hollande, appears to have returned from the wilderness.
The former head of the International Monetary Fund, whose career came to a spectacular end in 2011 when he was hauled off an Air France plane and arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a New York chambermaid, made a speech on Tuesday at a memorial evening for a politician.
Mr Hollande, the former Socialist president, spoke before him to pay tribute to Nicole Bricq, a former minister who died after a fall in August.
Mr Macron, the current centrist head of state, took to the stage after Mr Strauss-Kahn, who was eventually cleared of the sex attack on the chambermaid after settling out of court for an undisclosed sum of money.
Being seen with DSK, as Strauss-Kahn is known in France, has been taboo among French politicians since the New York scandal, which was quickly followed by his trial in France on "aggravated pimping" charges linked to the regular orgies he took part in (he was later acquitted of the charges).
But the 68-year-old’s appearance this week alongside both the current and the former president suggests he has been rehabilitated and is once again deemed fréquentable.
The Elysée, Mr Macron’s office, shot down any suggestions that DSK was now back in favour, with a spokeswoman telling the Telegraph that “you can’t draw any conclusions from this ceremony” which she noted was a private event organised not by the Elyséé but by Ms Bricq’s family.
But political commentator Michel Wieviorka said that while it was unlikely DSK would seek any political role in the future, his speech at the event “was perhaps a test to see how the media and public opinion react to his presence.”
In that speech his pointed comments were clearly directed at Mr Macron, who came to power this year after defining himself as “neither left nor right”.
“The values of the left and the values of the right are not the same,” Mr Strauss-Kahn said. “Both are necessary for balance in society, but their dialectical opposition will remain alive as long as democracy remains alive. Mixing them is not confusing them,” noted DSK, whose political career in France included a stint as economy minister in a Socialist government.
Mr Strauss-Kahn has since his departure from the IMF served as economic adviser to the Serbian government and helped launch a bank in South Sudan.
He also opened an investment firm, LSK & Partners, with a French-Israeli entrepreneur, Thierry Leyne, who died in Tel Aviv in 2014 having reportedly committed suicide.