Foreign Policy In Focus

Despite reservations, both Washington and Paris have decided that, when it comes to Tunisia, the horse they are going to ride is the Ennahda party.

Cross-posted from the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

Read Part 1.

"I get by with a little help from my friends."
-- Lennon, McCartney

News reports suggest that Tunisia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are 'very close' to coming to terms over a $1.78 billion loan to the North African country to help navigate it through the current stormy economic seas. In the short term, there is no doubt that an accord of such a large amount to such a small country will help the country get through the next few years, and help stabilize what has been an unstable and increasingly unpopular transitional government. But at what price to the country's medium and long term future? Rosy IMF projections that, with the loan's help, the Tunisian economy will grow by 4.5% next year are hardly credible.

There seems to be something of a 'rush to the finish', an effort on both the IMF's and Tunisian government's part to wrap up the negotiations as soon as possible. It is as if they are looking over their shoulders nervous that, as the agreement's terms get out, opposition could grow among the Tunisian people, thus the mutual effort to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible. There is  mounting concern within Tunisian civil society about the agreement, both in terms of the process which has been typically secretive and the "structural adjustment conditions" that the country will be forced to submit to in order to fulfill the Tunisian part of the deal.

In traditional IMF fashion,  the negotiations were very much 'under wraps' with virtually no input from anyone other than one member of the Tunisian Central Bank and another from the finance ministry. But in this post-Ben Ali age of Tunisian freedom of speech, it turned out to be difficult to impossible to hide the agreement terms, which several talented Tunisian researchers have been able to unearth.

The Political Significance of the IMF Loan

It is easy to get lost in the somewhat complex economic details of such agreements (although we will look at them shortly) At the same time, sometimes lost is the political significance of the agreement. It is nothing less than a 'green light', 'a seal of approval' – for the current direction of the Tunisian political leadership – most specifically, the Ennahda Party (Islamic Party) which dominates the ruling coalition and the political and economic direction of the country. The two other parties represented in Tunisia's ruling coalition, the Congress for the Republic (President Moncef Marzouki's party) and Ettakotal (Democratic Forum for Labor and Liberties) are much weaker, and their political will more or less circumscribed by Ennahdha. [i]

News of an impending agreement comes just at the moment when the Ennahda-led coalition government needs it most. In February, a popular opposition leader, Chedli Belaid, was assassinated at his home in Tunis. Belaid has been a critique of Ennahda's collusion with the country's Salafist elements, and the drift away from Tunisian democracy which has accelerated under Ennahda. The angry demonstrations that followed, which placed responsibility at the door of Ennahda, charging something between neglect and complicity very nearly brought down the coalition government.

While it survived, former Ennahda Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, who attempted to broaden the government's social base, was forced to step down. Jebali was replaced by another Ennahda bureaucrat, Ali Laarayedh, who was moved over from his post as interior minister. Key to forcing Jebali out was Ennahda Party leader Rachid Ghannouchi, who conveniently holds neither formal government nor party post, but is, for all intents and purposes, the gray eminence behind the scenes.

Ennahda survived the crisis, but barely. It managed to scrape by with a little help from its friends…in Washington and Paris. Its popularity tumbling in the polls, the economy stagnant – in worse condition than when Zine Ben Ali fled – Salafist thuggery growing and unimpeded, Ennahda needed something dramatic to reverse or slow its growing unpopularity among the Tunisian populace. Like mana from heaven – or more aptly from Washington – coming just in the nick of time, the IMF delivered the economic and political oxygen Ennahda needed to retain its hold on power.

Ennahda's Mana From Washington

Whatever their hesitations, both Washington and Paris – which together have considerable influence over IMF decisions – have decided that, when it comes to Tunisia, the horse that they are going to ride is Ennahdha.  This is the central political message of the IMF loan. Washington's support for Ennahda comes in spite of unimpeded storming and partial trashing of the U.S. embassy in Tunis last September in which the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior was unable to stop the riot, despite prior warning of danger, including a warning from U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia Jacob Welles that went unheeded.[ii]

Although some may wonder why the Obama Administration would support Ennahda, knowing well its working relationship with the country's radical Islamic militants of Salafist and Wahhabist persuasion, it is not as strange as it might seem at first. When it comes to working in tandem with U.S. regional strategic and economic goals, the Ennahda Party has never wavered. As we say, they know well on what side their bread is buttered. On economic policy, Ennahda continues, and with this IMF loan, even intensifies, Tunisia's commitment to neo-liberal economic policies – i.e., keeping the Tunisian economy open to global finance and corporate penetration.

Ennahda: Partner of the Obama Administration, Strategically and Economically

While Tunisia's strategic role in the region remains modest, still it plays an important role. America's Tunis embassy is a communications center for the Mediterranean and North Africa – a potential 'lily pad' from which U.S. military forces could 'jump' into sub-Sahara Africa (or elsewhere) if the situation presented itself. More importantly is the embassy's role collecting intelligence from throughout the region.

In other ways Ennahdha has made it clear 'which side it is on'. Much of its foreign policy is geared towards cooperation with U.S. strategic goals. The government's posture towards the crises in Libya and Syria suggest the kind of role Tunisia plays. Two examples:

• Recently there have been a spate of news stories of Tunisian youth dying fighting with Islamist rebels in Syria. Some reports suggest that it entails hundreds of Tunisian youth; at the very least, Ennahda has turned the other way and not interfered with Salafist recruitment, transfer to other places in the Middle East and training of these youth.  There are some allegations that Ennahda's role is more active. "Three young men from my village (near Sousse) will be buried today," a Tunisian friend wrote. "They died fighting in Syria," he went on, noting that a forth villager, a 22-year-old fighting with Islamic rebels, had died a few days prior. "They (the Ennahda-led government) promised us training, work, dignity, – in a word – 'a future' but they lied, betrayed us, and trained our youth to become assassins."

• Under Ennahda pressure, an incident which, among other things, revealed the powerlessness of Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki to protect Khadaffi's foreign minister, Baghdadi Al Mahmoudi, who had sought political asylum in Tunisia. In a sop to the U.S. and NATO, Ennahda turned Al Mahmoudi over to the Libya's National Transitional Council. One of Marzouki's closest advisors, Ayoub Massoudi, resigned over the handover, criticizing the Ennahda government as a 'theocratic dictatorship.' As a result, Massoudi was indicted and faces a military trial.

It is true that the new Tunisian government has initiated a new, more hostile posture towards Israel although that seems more for domestic public consumption than a real change in policy, and Israel knows it. Tunisia's Israel policy parallels that of Turkey, i.e., verbal criticisms but strategic cooperation through U.S. CENTCOM and NATO formations.

If its contribution strategically to Washington is somewhat limited, still, the Ennahda government is falling in line. The same goes for economic policy; actually where it concerns economic integration, Tunisia pre-and post-Ben Ali shows little to no signs of change. The Tunisian economy remains open to foreign corporate and financial penetration. The policies that led to the 2010-11 crisis, the cause of which were, in large measure, economic remain in place and intensify. Tunisia's continued vulnerability to the labile whims of structural adjustment will continue.

IMF Agreement Ties Tunisia's Hands Economically to the Neo-Liberal Economic Policies of the Past/La Lutta Continua

The proposed agreement – the details of which I will look at in depth in the third part of this series – essentially commits Tunisia to the neo-liberal economic path it has been on since 1987, when Zine Ben Ali first came to power. Ben Ali might be gone, but a policy of privatization of state resources, open capital markets, de-valued currency, wage repression, lifting of subsidies (already started), and cutting government spending for social programs will continue and with it the continued deepening suffering of the Tunisian people.

The situation I see developing in Tunisia looks something like this: the IMF loan will give Ennahda some 'living space' and in the short term they will be able, probably to cling to power. But in the medium and long run, their hold is untenable for their have failed to provide a vision for the country's future. All the old shortcomings – the economic stagnation, corruption, and not least, repression will once again show their faces and perhaps in an aggravated form.

Unable to deliver economically, but kept in power by the IMF loan in large measure, Ennahda, having all but destroyed the political coalition which came together to drive Ben Ali from power, will find, more and more, that, like Ben Ali, it too will have to resort to heightened repression to keep order; one can see the outlines of their policy –  in part they will continues to use their Salafist allies as brownshirts, to break up possible democratic coalition.

Under the veil of religion, there will be increasingly repressive legislation limiting freedom of speech, action. The labor movement, women's rights movement, the integrity of the country's higher education systems – all institutions, social movements that are already under fire – will be further reined in one way or another. All this will be done while Washington sings its song about human rights, but supports those in Tunisia who undermine them.

And as the history of structural adjustment almost always shows, the polarization, class and democratic struggles will intensify. Like my friend Jaco, a Tunisian Jew, said last summer when I asked him how he saw the situation in Tunisia playing out, "Before it gets better, it will get worse…but it will get better."

La lutta continua.

[i] For example, the position of the Tunisian presidency, held by Marzouki, has lost most of its power in the post Ben Ali era. That power has been transferred largely to the Tunisian prime minister – an Ennahdha member.

[ii] Interview with Abdelfattah Mouru, considered 'the number two' man behind Rachid Ghannouchi in the Ennahdha Party structure – in Denver, September 2012.

Two years after the Lara Logan assault, women continue to be attacked at protests in Tahrir Square.

Remember the Tahrir Square attack on Lara Logan two years ago while she was covering the demonstrations for CBS News? It seems that women -- even protestors -- continue to be sexually assaulted. At the Egypt Independent, Tom Dale writes:

A woman was sexually assaulted with a bladed weapon on Friday night, leaving cuts on her genitals, in central Cairo, in the midst of what was purportedly a revolutionary demonstration. … She was one among at least 19 women sexually assaulted in and around Tahrir Square on Friday night, according to accounts collated by Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment, an activist group. … There were other attacks involving bladed weapons. Six women required medical attention. No doubt there were more assaults, uncounted.

To experience the sheer horror of one of these attacks second-hand,  read this account at the Nazra for Feminist Studies website. Meanwhile, Dale again:

It is neither my place nor my wish to draw conclusions about "the revolution" from all this: I do not believe that is possible or wise. But I can say that as the familiar chants resonated in the square, the demands for justice, a new government and new constitution, I felt a little sick.

"Tahrir Square," he writes, "is both a place in which people both demand dignity for themselves and, in some cases, violently strip it from others. … It is not inevitable that Egypt's revolutionary street politics be undercut by a current of rape."

Still, there's a certain inevitability to the emergence of mob mentality. Especially with all the unemployed -- and thus un-marriageable -- young men in Egypt. Ideally, the perpetrators would be singled out and subjected to some form (not fatal!) of "revolutionary justice." Still, these crimes can be classified as fallout from not only the Egyptian government's repressive policies, but its failure to improve the economy. At Time, Tony Karon elaborates on Egypt's foundering economy.

Youth unemployment, one of the key drivers of the revolutionary upsurge in 2011, continues to grow, with official figures revealing that 25% of economically active [not sure what that means -- RW] people ages 25 to 29, and 41% of those ages 19 to 24, are jobless.

Karon again: "President Mohamed Morsi's plans to save Egypt’s sinking economy hinge on" -- stop me if you've heard this one before --

… a $5 billion loan from the IMF [which] can be accessed only on the condition of implementing austerity measures that will bring a sharp spike in the economic pain suffered by millions of impoverished households.

In any event, male Egyptian protesters would do well to remember it's not their sisters who are oppressing them. Diverting resources to policing their own while at the same time fighting the Egyptian government only slows the advance of their cause and diminishes its integrity.

Christine Lagarde became the first female to head the IMF on July 5 2011. Since the IMF was established, it has been dominated by Europeans and men. Only six of 30 senior executives and 21.5 percent of all managers have been women, and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) control only 10.8 percent of IMF votes. In this context, Lagarde’s position in the IMF is a great victory for women, but it still leaves developing countries with little power.

If the position had gone to the Mexican central bank leader Agustin Cartens, who is also well qualified for the position, he could have brought in a new perspective to the organization. Today many in the developing world continue to be frustrated with the IMF's structure since it doesn't reflect the shifting power balance in the global economy. As the Latin America News Dispatch characterized the situation, "Carstens, who gained the backing Latin American nations like Chile and Peru as well as Australia and Canada, believes that emerging markets need to play a much larger role in setting the agenda of the IMF."

I recently attended the National Organization for Women’s conference in Florida where participants debated the lack of female leaders. Female role models in positions of power could change this situation. Therefore Lagarde’s victory has given me a sense of hope that women can be as ambitious as men. Not only is she the first female leader of the IMF, but she is also the first non-economist to lead the IMF. One of her goals during her term is to increase the presence of developing countries in the organization. She has vowed to give China the third-strongest voice in the organization and to give more voice to countries like Brazil and South Korea.

Not only does she want to create more culture diversity but also gender diversity. Thus, she could bring a new sensibility to the IMF in terms of its policies toward women. She believes that a gender-dominated environment is not healthy. She often says that "too much testosterone" is a problem for the financial sector. Therefore, we can expect Lagarde to enhance women’s position and rights in the IMF.

Although Lagarde promises to diversify the organization, I still believe as a Ghanaian citizen that the position should have been given to a non-European, in particular a woman from a developing country.

One possible candidate is Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala the recently appointed finance minister of Nigeria and a former managing director of the World Bank. Okonjo-Iweala was notable for being the first female minister of finance and minister of foreign affairs under President Olusegun Obasanjo from 2003-2006. Okonjo-Iweala graduated from Harvard University and earned her Ph.D in regional economics and development from MIT. She helped Nigeria obtain its first sovereign debt rating and helping slash Nigeria’s debt by almost $30 billion. Today she is a role model for many Nigerians and Africans at large, in particular women, and the IMF would do well to consider her for its next leader.

Esther Ohrt is a Foreign Policy in Focus intern.

PAESTUM, ITALY -- Walls tell you a lot about a country’s history. Since their purpose is to keep people out who want to get in, they generally mean trouble. In the case of this stunning ruin of a city southeast of Naples, back in the 6^th century BC the Greeks were trying to keep out the Etruscans who didn’t cotton to a colony plunked down in their midst. 

Italy has lots of walls, particularly in the north and center where towns and cities cluster on the high ground. The Italians did not build on mountain tops for the view. What is picturesque now was safe haven from the barbarians back then.

Except, the barbarians are back, only this time they are not tribes with scary names like Goths, Huns and Lombards. Today the brutes have bland sounding labels like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union (EU) and Moody’s. And some of the worst are homegrown: Silvio Berlusconi and Giullo Tremonti.

Italy is in deep trouble, though it is hardly alone. While the headlines go to Greece, Portugal and Spain, Italy has the second highest rate of debt in Europe and one of the lowest growth rates. On July 8, Italian bond yields jumped to a nine-year high, and the country’s stock market tanked. Given that Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone, if it is in trouble, so is the Euro. And, unlike Portugal, Greece or Ireland, Italy is far too big for a bail out (not that the thuggish austerity programs being forced on all three of those countries have anything in common with “bail outs.” They are simply taxpayers covering ruinous speculation binges by French, German and Dutch banks).

There are signs that the Italian economy is running off the rails, but the signs are subtle. Lots of locked houses and long grass, for instance.

The locked houses are in Pompeii, where the government no longer has the money to shore up the walls of the 2,000 year-old city. From the Pompeii of glorious mosaics and stunning frescos it has become a ghost town that one views from roads and sidewalks.

The immense Doric temples at Paestum are wonderfully preserved, but grass has reclaimed much of the rest of the site. It is charming to wander through the ruins, finding lovely mosaic floors, peristyle gardens or swimming pools, but the Italian authorities did not let the grass grow in order to stimulate the curiosity of tourists; they don’t have the money to cut it.

There is a sense in this country that people are holding their breath. The current center-right government is pushing through a $68 billion austerity package that will increase the retirement age, cut medical benefits, and lay off state workers, but many of the cuts will not take effect until 2013 and 2014. Hoping to avoid the wrath of voters, the current finance minister, Giullo Tremonti, has back loaded the cuts so they won’t take effect until after next spring’s elections.

As in ancient Rome, there are graffiti everywhere. There are hammers and sickles painted on the walls in Naples, as well as scrawls threatening “death to the Communists.” The left took power here in the last elections and is currently locked in a battle with the local Mafia over corruption. A cursory glance at this teeming, energetic, and most Italian of cities suggests the left is holding its own: the Mafia’s tactic of flooding the place with garbage is not working. The streets are chaotic, loud, and anarchic, but clean.

Sometimes it is hard to decide if Italians are holding their breath or their noses. For instance, Tremonti’s political advisor, Marco Milanese, a member of parliament, was arrested last week as part of a corruption investigation, forcing Tremonti to give up using Milanese’s luxury flat in Rome. In the meantime, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi secretly tried to slip a clause into the budget bill that would delay paying a huge $1.5 billion fine against his flagship media company, Fininvest.

Compared to social unrest in Greece, Spain, Britain and Portugal, Italy has been relatively tranquil. While the Greeks are in open rebellion against the austerity packages of the IMF and the EU, Italian demonstrations have been big but generally quiet. Tremonti told the Financial Times that Italians are different than Greeks and would accept austerity, because “The Italian people understand,” he said, “their demand is to be serious and rigorous. People are strongly in favor of this discipline.”

Tremonti is whistling past the graveyard, his words an eerie echo of Greek Prime Minister George Papandrerou’s comment that Greeks were “unified” behind the government program.” Outside the parliament Athens seethes with rage, and hundreds of thousands of Greeks battle tear gas and police batons to demonstrate quite the opposite. A recent poll found that 80 percent of the Greeks oppose the austerity plan.

There is nothing to indicate that Italians won’t follow the Greeks into the streets once the cuts hit home here. A stencil on a wall in Citta de Castello shows two stick figures, one firing a gun at the head of the other. Underneath the picture is one word: “capitalism.”

Europe (and much of the world) is currently in the throes of a counterrevolution led by a combination of local capitalists and international finance. Using the crisis sparked by bank speculation, its goals are to weaken trade unions, roll back social services and pensions, and privatize as much as possible. Wages have fallen across the continent, and temporary jobs with sketchy or non-existent benefits have grown at the expense of regular employment.

The “crisis” is a one-way street. As a Financial Times analysis pointed out last month, “Millionaires across the world are richer they were before the financial crisis, the latest sign that the wealthy have weathered the downturn far better than other groups.”

The number of millionaires in North America went from 2.7 to 3.4 million from 2008 to 2010 and, in Europe, from 2.6 to 3.1 million during the same time period. Italy was the only EU country that saw a slight drop in the number of millionaires: 179 to 170. The countries with the largest number of millionaires are, in decreasing order, the U.S., Japan, Germany, China and Britain.

Capital is playing hardball in this counterrevolution.

On one level, governments like in Greece have unleashed their police in an effort to drive the hundreds of thousands of young people, teachers, government workers and trade unionists off the streets.

On another level, rating agencies like Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch deliberately downgrade bonds in order to protect private investors. When investors are asked to absorb some of the losses that their speculation generated, the rating agencies step in and make an offer no country can refuse: drop efforts to make private speculators pay or we tank your bonds and drive up the cost of borrowing money. “The credit rating agencies are playing politics not economics. The timing of the downgrades are not a coincidence,” one “senior EU official” told the Financial Times.

The “bailout” will not stop Greece from defaulting on its debt (with Ireland, Portugal and Spain likely to follow). Nor is there any way for a country like Greece to climb back out of the debt pit as long as its currency policies are dictated by Germany and France. 

Italy has some experience with this business of crisis and currency, although its current leaders choose to ignore it. Back in the early 19^th century, Naples was the largest city in Italy, and the south had a diverse and dynamic economy. It was the first region in Italy to build railroads, but the madness of the Catholic Church derailed the effort by blocking passage through the Papal States. Pope Gregory XVI called rails “roads to hell.”

According to Sir Martin Jacomb, former Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, the sabotage of railway development marks the beginning of the south’s decline. But it wasn’t until the lira was made the national currency in 1861 that “it [the south] lost its ability to correct its uncompetitive position. Able and enterprising people moved to the north or emigrated, and the situation became permanent, as it remains today. The tragedy endures.” 

Southern Italy has been locked into poverty for close to 200 years, a fate that is almost certain to befall other periphery members of the EU. Generations of poverty and emigration will be the price tag for protecting the investments of the very people who brought the current economic crisis on. The Citta di Castello stencil was, if anything, an understatement.

So far Italy is quiet, but everyone is aware that the coup of capital is being contested in the streets of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Britain, as it will eventually be in Rome, Naples, and Milan.

In the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre in 1819, where the British government sent cavalry to scatter a massive demonstration demanding political reform, an enraged Percy Bysshe Shelly penned “The Mask of Anarchy,” which ended in words that today’s powerful would do well to consider:

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many—they are few.

More of Conn Hallinan's work can be found at Dispatches From the Edge.

(Pictured: "Bilderbergers" building bridges.)

In the infamous column in which French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy cried his outrage at the public humiliation inflicted to Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the aftermath of his arrest, one sentence described particularly well the unspoken but unshakeable consensus governing politicians and the law in France. Levy expressed his indignation against: “The American judge who by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other.”

The idea that Strauss-Kahn should not be treated as “a subject of justice like any other” remained a leitmotiv through the flood of media reactions to his arrest in France. Because he had more to lose than “a vulgar delinquent” would have in a similar case, the argument went, because of his years of service to the world as head of the IMF and because of his prestige as future presidential candidate, he should be given special treatment. His disgrace should be hidden from public view; he should be spared the humiliation and disagreement of handcuffs, detention, and monitoring; and most importantly he should be given the benefit of the doubt.

This is nothing new in under the sun in French Politics. During his twelve years as President, Jacques Chirac was cited in nine different corruption cases while shielded both by presidential immunity and a merciful public opinion. One of his former Prime Ministers, Alain Juppé, was convicted of corruption in 2004, only to be recently welcomed back into Sarkozy's government in the key spot of Minister of Foreign Affairs. Other prominent members of the French government have been implicated in scandals in the past few years, from Minister of Budget Eric Woerth's shady dealings with L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt to former Minister of Interior Brice Hortefeux's conviction for racial slander. While these cases certainly sparked media scandals, Sarkozy maintained his public support to the indicted ministers -- perpetuating the tradition of that political figures benefiting from impunity, proportionally to their rank. The message is clear: you might have to lay low for a couple of years after the scandal but you will be protected, and eventually come back safely to the front rows of power.

Another such disreputable figure is Bernard Tapie, a Berlusconi-esque figure who has dabbled in murky-yet-profitable business ventures, show business, politics and soccer club management. He last hogged newspaper headlines in 2008, for receiving 403 million Euros of public funds in compensation for having been cheated fifteen years earlier by the French Bank Credit Lyonnais in the sale of the firm Adidas, which he headed at the time. In a time of economic downturn, public opinion was outraged that Tapie would received such a colossal sum, coming straight from their tax-Euros. But most importantly, the procedure through which the settlement was made was shady: three arbiters were picked to review the case and come to a decision behind closed doors a process contested at the time by several legal commentators, since public funds were involved.

Most critical to the affair is who took these questionable decisions and personally picked the arbiters: France's Minister of Economy and Finances, and now leading candidate to take Strauss-Kahn's spot as head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde. Lagarde could face prosecution for “abuse of authority” in this case, as the Cour de Justice de la Republique (CJR), in charge of judging crimes and offenses perpetrated by Ministers in office, is evaluating the case and deliberating on the need for further investigation. More severe than the dubious process chosen to settle the case is the fact, revealed by french independent news website Mediapart (), that Lagarde knew of a relationship between one of the arbiters and Tapie's attorney and chose not to interrupt the process or appeal its outcome.

In the mainstream media's coverage of Lagarde's candidacy, the case is usually referred to as a detail, almost a footnote. Lagarde herself dismisses these accusations as innocuous. “I am perfectly confident and serene regarding this subject and this has absolutely no bearing on my candidacy” she declared on June 10^th, after her audience was pushed back to July. Once again, just as Strauss-Kahn's widely known compulsion toward sexual harassment never impeded his political ascendency, we are faced with an example in which a political leader is not held to the rule of law because of a “special treatment” granted by her position on the national and now global political chessboard. There is serious evidence that Christine Lagarde, in the cesspool of corruption that is France's political landscape turned a blind eye on another instance of cronyism. Should it be disregarded as Strauss-Kahn's history of sexual “misconduct” was four years ago?

Jeanne Kay is an intern at Foreign Policy in Focus.