CHONGQING,: China’s leadership faced continued resistance on Friday in its efforts to hand down final judgment against deposed politician Bo Xilai, despite moving swiftly to wrap up a murder charge against his wife who now risks the death penalty.
Bo Xilai, once a contender for the top rungs of power, and his wife have been disgraced in the nation’s biggest political scandal in two decades, which centers on the murder in China of a British businessman who had been a close family friend.
Bo has not been implicated in the murder but has been accused of breaching internal party discipline, sometimes code for corruption.
On Thursday, China charged Bo’s glamorous wife, Gu Kailai, with poisoning expatriate Neil Heywood last year in a proceeding that lawyers expect to end swiftly with a conviction and lead to a life sentence or possibly her execution by lethal injection. A lawyer employed by Gu’s family has said the trial will likely start early next month.
However, shutting the door on the political case against Bo, who still faces party disciplinary proceedings, could prove to be much more difficult, given the former party boss of Chongqing city retains some strong support at the party’s grass roots.
Despite months of unanswered allegations against the Bo family from police and party sources, Bo’s leftist supporters are uncowed and see the case as political revenge, said Zhang Hongliang, an influential far-left intellectual in Beijing.
“Whatever personal problems Bo Xilai might have, that’s a completely different matter than his policies in Chongqing,” Zhang said in comments emailed a day before Gu’s indictment. (Reuters)
