Opinion Sex barometer for a President?

Simultaneously,pandemonium broke loose internationally. The press ran amuck,detailing every move,dissecting and bisecting DSK’s character,unearthing his alleged romps. France was in utter shock,and criticised America’s judicial system. Strauss-Kahn was tipped to contest and win the next Presidential election as a Socialist party candidate. The French can’t believe that on a woman’s protest,and sans any proof,American police are empowered to take the ferocious action of relegating a high-profile public official to solitary confinement,destroying his reputation,even destabilising another country’s election process.

There’s also been gambling on whether DSK’s French political opponents orchestrated this. Tabloid website Le Post said the first person to tweet the arrest,even before the arrest,was Jonathan Pinet,a French right-wing UMP party activist. Pinet said he got the news from his friend who works at the hotel. Le Post says the first person to retweet Pinet was Arnaud Dassier,who’d previously been implicated in revealing anti-DSK material. And the first website to mention the news,before New York Post broke the story,was 24heuresactu,a right-wing blog.

“I don’t believe for a single second the accusations of sexual assault by my husband,” said the ex-IMF chief’s third wife,Anne Sinclair who’s more famous than this second husband she married in 1991. I was an avid fan of her brilliant TV show called 7/7 in the 1980s. Her 500-plus interviews included presidents Francois Mitterrand,Mikhail Gorbachev and Bill Clinton,and stars Yves Montand and Madonna. A multi-million heiress,whose grandfather was Picasso’s art dealer,she rushed to New York bringing “brains,beauty & cash to save her man,” reported website whatonsanya. She hired the best lawyers,put up $6 million in bail,$50,000-a-month to rent a New York apartment to live in house-arrest with her husband. From the beginning,DSK had stated it was consensual sex. Women have criticised her tolerance,but Anne Sinclair is determined to prove her husband is not a rapist.

Then suddenly the tables turned. In a stunning court hearing on July 1,Dominique Strauss-Kahn was freed from house arrest,his bail money returned but not his passport as the case is due for hearing on July 18. What happened? Prosecutors admit to ‘serious credibility issues’ with his 32-year-old Guinean immigrant accuser. UK’s Daily Mail reported,“Two official sources said the unnamed woman,within a day of her encounter with Strauss-Kahn,spoke telephonically to an imprisoned alleged drug dealer who is accused of possessing 400lb of marijuana. In the recorded conversation she reportedly discussed possible benefits of pursuing charges against Strauss-Kahn.” One paper even said she was a sex worker. It appears the maid’s bank account in two years had cash deposits of over £62,000,and her five phones ran up hundreds of dollars bills every month,although she said she possessed one phone only.

Prosecutors said the alleged victim falsified her 2004 application for asylum to the US. She also changed her original police statement that “she fled to an area of the main hallway of the hotel’s 28th floor,waited until she observed the defendant leave suite 2806 and the 28th floor by entering an elevator. Now she says that after the alleged incident,she proceeded to clean a nearby room,then returned to suite 2806,began to clean that suite before she reported the incident to her supervisor.” She also allegedly owned up to falsely claiming a friend’s child as her own to get a higher tax refund.Is this Hollywood film displaying American bigness becoming like a Bollywood entertainment fantasy? In the frightening movie Jaws,the shark at sea was only a robot shot in a big pond at Universal Studios,a background screen created the skyline. In this matter,who will the judge believe on July 18? DSK’s maintaining consensual sex or the maid claiming rape? Will this judgment showcase America’s dream of becoming emperor of global politics? Never having enjoyed a real emperor’s power like Napoleon or Hitler the dictator had,perhaps in the name of freedom Americans love to impose a democratic imperial or dictatorial character while flying the American flag of liberty.

Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top management. Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com