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Former IMF chief and onetime saviour of the left will not get a warm welcome at party conference on return from US As the French Socialist party gathered for its conference on La Rochelle waterfront, the souvenir postcard stand still featured a pile of black-and-white portraits of a grinning Dominique Strauss-Kahn. But delegates seemed to be avoiding them. Days after a New York prosecutor dropped all the charges against Strauss-Kahn for allegedly attempting to rape an immigrant hotel maid, the one-time saviour of the French left remained far from welcome among his own party’s grassroots. “I’m terrified he’ll turn up here,” whispered a 50-year-old regional councillor from rural south-west France, who did not want to be named. “If he wants the party to win next year’s presidential election, he’ll stay well away,” she added. “This whole Strauss-Kahn affair is far from over. Politically, he’s fried. I don’t know how he could come back knowing what we now know about his behaviour. Whatever the truth about these allegations, the whole party was blackened by this saga, its credibility was put on the line.” Only three months ago, Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and a former French finance minister, was tipped to beat Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential election in 2012. His hopes of being nominated as the Socialist’s candidate next year are now utterly dead. But released from bail, Strauss-Kahn has said he is desperate to return to France and “normal life” as soon as possible. He has been given back his passport and this weekend flies to Washington, where his millionaire TV journalist wife will put their townhouse on the market before, as expected, they return to Paris in around a week. First, Strauss-Kahn is expected to visit the IMF to say goodbye to his former staff. He had also considered speaking out about his views on the global financial crisis to claw back his economic prestige, but all this has been postponed to avoid overshadowing the Socialists’ conference. Strauss-Kahn has also promised to publicly explain himself to the French, but whether this will happen remains uncertain. Any account of events that took place in the Sofitel hotel room on 14 May would be difficult, given the public outrage about aspects of his private life. The French feminist backlash has not abated, and many continue to question how a nine-minute encounter in a hotel room between two complete strangers, a powerful man and a poor hotel worker, could have been consensual. Strauss-Kahn will not have an easy landing in France. A poll on Friday found 80% of people do not want him to play any role in the Socialist primary race to choose a presidential candidate. If the party elite confidently rushed to proclaim their joy and relief after the New York case was dropped this week, it illustrated how far they are from public feeling. French voters are sceptical over the confusing and unresolved affair. Strauss-Kahn’s private life and treatment of women has been pored over, his reputation tarnished. The French justice system also continues to investigate a complaint by the writer Tristane Banon, who said Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her during a 2003 interview. A court in the Bronx in New York is still to examine a civil case for damages by the hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo. Her lawyers have now also filed a complaint in France alleging that an official in Sarcelles, where Strauss-Kahn was once mayor, attempted to bribe one of their witnesses. They said a French woman contacted them with evidence about Strauss-Kahn’s behaviour to support their case. Her family was then contacted by an official close to Strauss-Kahn’s camp who asked “how much” she wanted to keep quiet. An inquiry for witness bribery was opened in France this week. Amid this backdrop, Socialist party activists in La Rochelle were jittery about what role Strauss-Kahn might try to play in the open primary race. The vote will take place in early October and the frontrunners, two former party leaders, François Hollande and Martine Aubry, are currently trying not to live up to the cut-throat war of personal attacks the party is famous for. Socialists fear any public comments or position taking by Strauss-Kahn will alienate voters, particularly women, and bring a new round of ego battles that the party is trying to calm. Jean Lemarié, a former France Telecom worker, Normandy councillor and party activist for 30 years said: “Judicially and politically, Strauss-Kahn can’t come back. All that we’ve learnt about his personality and behaviour these past three months, party activists and the party don’t like that. But he could play a role as an adviser behind the scenes, or even publicly.” “He’s dead, politically,” lamented one 61-year-old socialist activist who said it was a “big loss” for the party. “Finally, we had found someone who could present a moderate-left programme without scaring the right. Someone who could win. But he can’t make a come back politically before the civil case is over.” “If he had been found innocent by a jury, things would be easier,” said another activist of the prosecutors’ decision to drop charges based on doubts over the credibility of the hotel maid. “What we point out is that he has not actually been cleared by a court, the charges have been dropped on a technicality,” said Patricia Perennes, an economist and activist who was at the La Rochelle stand for the feminist group Osez Le Féminisme. But Gerard Tourette, a former post office worker and activist in Averyon, was banking on French voters’ short memories, claiming that perhaps not now but in a few years, Strauss-Kahn could be back. “We’ll need him as an adviser in the primary race. His expertise will be useful. But I don’t want him to speak publicly, everything that’s happened means he’ll have to stay in the shadows. In the future, I could see him as a minister, or senator, even head of the senate.” Dominique Strauss-Kahn France Europe Nicolas Sarkozy IMF Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk