PERP WALK: Detectives promenade a handcuffed Dominique Strauss-Kahn in front of the cameras, which upset his upper-crust compatriots. (AFP/Getty Images)
Mayor Bloomberg yesterday blasted back at French critics who whined that Dominique Strauss-Kahn shouldn’t have been subjected to a “perp walk.”
“I think it is humiliating, but if you don’t want to do the perp walk, don’t do the crime,” Hizzoner said.
“I don’t have a lot of sympathy for that.”
The day before, former French Justice Minister Elisabeth Guigou decried the pictures of a handcuffed Strauss-Kahn being led out of an East Harlem station house.
Bloomberg, who was in Albany to lobby the Legislature to pass a gay-marriage law, defended the American judicial system, where “the public can see the alleged perpetrators.”
He also backed the judge’s decision ship off the head of the International Monetary Fund and leading French presidential candidate to a cell at Rikers Island.
“He would be the kind of person who has a good chance of fleeing and France does not have an extradition treaty with the United States,” Bloomberg said.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner last night said Strauss-Kahn should be replaced at the helm of the global finance agency.
“Of course I can’t comment on the case, but he’s obviously not in the position to run the IMF, and I think it’s important that the board of the IMF formally put in place for a period somebody to act as managing director,” Geithner said at the Harvard Club in New York.
Geithner’s call for Strauss-Kahn to step aside or be removed by the IMF board was echoed by finance officials around the world.
“Considering the situation, that bail was denied, he has to figure out for himself that he is hurting the institution,” said Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter as she arrived for a meeting of top finance officials in Brussels.
Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, said: “Support will erode fairly quickly. I see this as a matter of days.”
The scandal following the accusation that Strauss-Kahn allegedly tried to rape a hotel maid in Manhattan is causing turmoil in international finance and French politics, where Strauss-Kahn had been set to take on President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s elections.
Developing nations are rising in influence at the IMF and using Strauss-Kahn’s arrest as a chance to push for someone other than a European to sit at its helm.
White House press secretary Jay Carney wouldn’t call on Strauss-Kahn to quit, saying only that the Obama administration had “full confidence” in the IMF’s ability to function.