“IS HE back yet?” Ibrahim Akdogan asks urgently of the man known to many in Sarcelles simply as Dominique. A pensioner of Turkish origin, Akdogan came here in 1980 and watched Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s rise from the local town hall to the highest levels of French and global power.
And then, in the space of four months, he watched it all unravel. When Strauss-Kahn last visited France at Easter, he basked in the warmth of the public goodwill that had made him the frontrunner to win next year’s presidential election. He is expected back in Paris perhaps this weekend, the charges against him for the attempted rape of a hotel maid having been dropped but his ambitions now thwarted and his career apparently in shreds.
Akdogan’s faith is undimmed, however. “It was a plot, Monsieur. He’s a millionaire. If he wanted a woman, he could have thousands of beautiful women. It’s a joke.
“If he comes back here and there’s a party, I’ll be there – everyone will be there. Just wait and see.”
If some of Strauss-Kahn’s most ardent supporters have their way, a party will indeed greet the former head of the IMF when he returns. When Jean-Pierre Passe-Coutrin, a Socialist Party official at city hall, publicly broached the idea of a “very big event” or “a concert” to mark Strauss-Kahn’s return, a storm of criticism prompted the mayor, François Pupponi, to tone down the triumphalist rhetoric. “Dominique hasn’t won the World Cup,” he said. “Nothing is planned or formally organised.”
Sarcelles, a town of some 60,000 people directly north of Paris, has been Strauss-Kahn’s political base since the late 1980s. He was mayor here between 1995 and 1997 and a national assembly member for the surrounding Val d’Oise département for 16 years. The town is known for its large Jewish population – many of whom came from north Africa in the 1960s – and synagogues and kosher food shops are scattered throughout the endless housing blocks. More recent waves of immigration have brought north African Muslims, Turks and Chinese in big numbers.
Sympathy for Strauss-Kahn runs deep in a town where he has always been fondly regarded. “He never did anything to help me personally, but I know a lot of people he helped when he was mayor here,” says Gallup Ba, a retiree doing his shopping in the town centre. “He’s a human being. As the saying goes, ‘only God is perfect’. It was an error, and now it’s done. I think he has to bounce back.”
A “support committee” set up by mayor Pupponi has gathered more than 3,500 signatures. Kenza Marzou, a woman in her late 30s, would gladly add her name to the list. “I don’t think he did it,” she says firmly. “With the money he had, he could pay for any woman he wanted. He has a beautiful wife. It wouldn’t be worth it, would it? And if his wife supports him, why shouldn’t we?”
Amram Taid, a local man in his 40s, is convinced “DSK” was set up, and laments that “nowadays, you can hardly flirt with a woman without a complaint being filed”. He is not convinced DSK’s career is over. “Look at Juppé,” he smiles, referring to Alain Juppé, the current foreign minister, who received a 14-month suspended sentence in 2003 over his role in a corrupt party financing scandal.
Strauss-Kahn’s imminent return poses a dilemma for senior party figures, who proclaimed their joy at his release but, with an election looming next year, are acutely sensitive to polls showing little public desire to see him return to public prominence.
Presidential hopeful Martine Aubry distanced herself from Strauss-Kahn for the first time this week, saying she shared the thoughts of many women “about Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s attitude to women”. The socialist former prime minister Michel Rocard said he was “mentally ill”.
On the streets of Sarcelles, views on l'affaire DSKdon't break down easily along gender or religious lines. Some of his strongest supporters are Jewish, but so too his most trenchant critics. "I don't have much positive to say about him," says Salomon Ben Sabat, picking up his copy of Le Parisienon Place André Gide. He would have voted for Strauss-Kahn against Sarkozy, but now believes the socialist is "dead and buried".
Nadjat Aboubakary, shopping with her young daughter, says that in her workplace, views on the scandal have shifted with every new revelation. “The problem is we don’t know who is telling the truth,” she says. But the saga has made her weary. “It’s not so much a man/woman thing. It’s a question of money. Before all this, we knew that with money you could get a lot done. Now we can see it can get you anything.”