Nadine Williams

The bitch factor in French politics:

 

It comes as no surprise that former International Monetary Fund chief French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his high profile wife Anne Sinclair have split.

The once-powerful French couple have parted after 20 years of marriage following yet another scandal involving Strauss-Kahn according to the French weekly magazine Closer.

The separation was on the cards even though Sinclair stood by her man during his sensational New York sex assault scandal with a New York chamber maid in May last year.

The scandal forced Strauss-KIahn to quit his IMF post and destroyed his hopes of running for French president in the recent election for the Socialist Party, which instead won power under Francois Hollande.

But it is believed that his alleged involvement with a prostitution ring has been the last straw for Sinclair, a wealthy heiress.

While Strauss-Kahn has grown depressed at his political demise, his wife has relaunched her media career as a news editor at the French edition of the US website The Huffington Post.

Sources close to the estranged couple confirmed that she threw him out of their home in central Paris about a month ago and the former IMF chief is now living in a separate residence in Paris.

The breakup contradicts an interview she did with Elle Magazine at the time of her appointment as editorial director.

When criticised that she should have ditched her philandering husband back in January 6, she retorted: “I am neither a saint, nor a victim,’’ she said.

“I am a free woman. No one knows what happens in the privacy of a couple and I refuse anyone the right to judge mine.’’

THEN THERE is the tangled web of romantic intrigue of France’s new president Francois Holland, whose love life belies his bland appearance.

Five years ago, his partner, French politician Segolene Royal was the most powerful woman in France as  leader of the Socialist Party in 2007 –  the first woman in France to be nominated by a major party to contest the 2007 French presidential election. However,  she lost to Nicolas Sarkozy.  Simultaneously, in June 2007 – on the night of the legislative election she asked her common law husband of 29 years – Francois Hollande to leave because she could no longer cope with his affair with a female journalist,Valerie Trierweiler.

The high profile couple had four children and the separation rocked France, even though Holland had never married her.

Five years on, at the next election in May this year, Holland – her former partner – won the election she so yearned for.

In 2008, the photogenic Segolene entered the leadership election of the Socialist Party to replace her former lover as president of the party, but as history shows, she lost.  Fast forward onto 2012 and Holland went on to win the French presidential election held on May 6.

And still the love tussle continues. Evidently there is no love lost between Segolene and Francois’s now entrenched lover.

Last month when the incumbent president  and the Socialist Party backed Segolene for a seat on the National Assembly,  his mistress launched a political assault on her in a bitchy move by tweeking her support for a Olivier Faloni and, horror of horrors for Segolene, Olivier was elected and Royal, the local candidate for Nantes, was defeated.  She was due to take the seat of Parliament de l’Assemblee Nationale.;,.  Again Segolene narrowly lost a seat on the National Assembly.

How heartbroken she must be as her political star fades and Francois shines like a lighthouse.  C’est la vie politique en France.