PARIS — Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s wife, who stood by the former IMF boss as he battled sex assault allegations in New York and Paris, was named France’s 2011 woman of the year in a poll released Monday.
Anne Sinclair, a former star TV presenter and wealthy art heiress, beat other notable women to the title including Christine Lagarde, who resigned as French finance minister to take the top job at the International Monetary Fund and steer it through the current global financial instability.
Sinclair scored 25 percent to Lagarde’s 24 percent overall in the CSA/Terrafemina poll of 1,005 adults, conducted by phone between Dec. 6 and 7. But she was a clear runaway favorite among women-only respondents — in particular the 50-plus age group — garnering 31 percent to Lagarde’s 21 percent. The split was 28 percent against 19 percent in the finance chief’s favor among male-only respondents.
However some high profile French women are not happy about the poll results, including the Green party’s 2012 presidential hopeful Eva Joly, who earned 11 percent of the woman of the year vote. She told the iTele news station that making a heroine out of Sinclair was “a sad image of womanhood” and that she was “no role model for women.”
Also on the list with just 16 percent overall was President Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife, the singer and former supermodel Carla Bruni, who gave birth to the couple’s first child in October. Coming in last among the group of preselected names, was Strauss-Kahn’s French rape accuser Tristane Banon, who scored a lowly 4 percent.
Sinclair was a permanent fixture by the side of her husband, flying to New York as soon as he was arrested on charges of attempting to rape a maid at a swanky Manhattan hotel in May. She remained at his side as US prosecutors later dropped the case against him. His accuser Nafissatou Diallo continues to pursue a civil case against him.
Behind the scenes friends suggest their relationship was strained by the New York affair, the threat of legal action by Banon and ongoing allegations linking Strauss-Kahn to a prostitution ring in northern France.
Meanwhile, Strauss-Khan said Monday that the eurozone collapse would not solve Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, stressing that the continent’s banks must be recapitalized, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Strauss-Kahn was speaking at a forum in Beijing in a rare public appearance after having sexual-assault charges against him dropped.
He told reporters that European banks are more willing to reduce lending than raise new capital to meet higher capital adequacy ratio standards — a development that has negative implications for the regional economy.
A fundamental solution to the debt crisis should be based on economic development and growth, and there should not be excessive focus on austerity measures, he said, adding that the IMF’s strategy for Greece has not been well adopted, which he called “a pity.”
Strauss-Kahn predicted that it will take a long time for the European Union to emerge from the crisis.