Why
Gu Kailai stood by her man By Wu
Zhong,
China Editor
HONG KONG - As expected, a
Chinese court on Monday gave Gu Kailai, the wife
of disgraced forner Chongqing Communist Party
chief Bo Xilai, a suspended death sentence for
murdering British businessman Neil Heywood late
last year.
The verdict in Hefei, the
provincial capital of Anhui province, had some
critics saying it was too lenient and others
saying it was too heavy. In China, a suspended
death sentence can be reduced to a life sentence -
meaning lifelong incarceration - with a possible
reduction to 20 years in jail if the convict
behaves well.
A more intriguing issue
revoles around Bo. Witnesses at the court said
that throughout the whole trial, his name wasn't
mentioned once.
This has prompted analysts
to accuse the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) of trying to
protect its reputation by keeping Bo out of the
case. This is probably true. After all, the
party's image would be severely damaged if one of
its Politburo members was found to be involved in
a brutal murder.
However, from another
perspective it seems Gu was the one protecting Bo.
At the court, she willingly confessed to the
poisoning of Heywood and accepted the verdict as
"just". As Gu, the chief culprit, accepted all the
blame, Bo could hardly be implicated. If she is as
cunning as she is reputed to be, there is a chance
that Gu calculated that Bo could yet make a
political comeback and save her.
Bo is
still immune to court proceedings as he remains a
party member and deputy of the National People's
Congress (NPC) - China's parliament. Before he
could stand trial, these privileges must be
removed.
Bo is still under investigation
by the party's Central Commission of Disciplinary
Inspection for alleged violations of party
discipline, an accusation that covers all kinds of
wrongdoings, including criminal offences. Given
his seniority, only the CCP's Central Committee
can decide on a deprival of his party membership.
The current Central Committee is due to hold its
plenary session in late September or October -
before the CCP convenes its 18th National
Congress. It is widely expected Bo's fate will be
decided at this plenary session.
The
Standing Committee of the NPC will hold a meeting
next week. This will likely give indications of
whether Bo's NPC membership will be revoked.
Once Bo's legal immunity is removed, he
may still have to face trial in relation to the
Heywood murder case, apart from other facing other
possible charges such as corruption, abuse of
power and dereliction of duty.
Four former
senior Chongqing police officers, including a
former deputy chief of Chongqing police, were
given jail terms early this week for helping Gu
cover up the murder. It is unlikely they acted on
their own, and must have been given orders by
their superiors.
It has been reported that
the then Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, who
used to be a close aide of Bo before and during
the latter's period as the muncipality's party
secretary, reported the murder of Heywood
immediately to Bo and was told to keep his hands
off. Shortly afterwards, in February this year,
Wang "walked" into the US Consulate General in
Chengdu, provincial capital of Sichuan neighboring
Chongqing. If this is true, the testimony of Wang,
who is reportedly to stand trial soon, will
inevitablly implicate Bo.
Even the
confession of Gu, who might have tried to protect
her husband, is not totally in favor of Bo. Her
motivation to kill Heywood, she said, was because
the British businessman threatened to harm her son
Bo Guagua, then a student at Harvard University in
the United States, if she failed to give him US$20
million. A business dispute was given as the
reason.
But this doesn't answer all the
questions raised. What kind of business dispute
between Heywood and Bo junior would prompt the
British businessman to make such threats? Bo told
the media in March that his family was not
involved in any commercial business. So why were
there business disputes? Surely, such arguments
could be settled with money? Given the power of Bo
Xilai, it would not have been difficult for his
family to make any arrangement (such as having
some business people pay Heywood).
Why
would Heywood resort to threatening the son of a
very powerful politician in China, especially as
the British businessman was still living in the
country?
A rather more plausible
explanation, as some commentators have pointed
out, is that Heywood might have held evidence that
could jeopardize the political future of Bo senior
when he was widely seen as a rising political
star. If Heywood indeed attempted such blackmail,
his target was likely Bo, and this would make the
Englishman an obstacle to Bo Xilai's political
career. He would need to be silenced ahead of the
all-important 18th party congress, at which senior
Bo originally was hopeful to move up a rung of the
power ladder to the inner ruling circle of the
Politburo Standing Committee.
In any case,
Beijing will find other faults to nail Bo with,
even if it cannot find hard evidence to implicate
him in the Heywood case. Corruption would be a
convenient charge as his family, as reported,
could hardly be said to be clean. If Heywood
indeed asked for $20 million, he should have well
known how wealthy the Bo family was. But where
does their wealth come from?
Dereliction
of duties could be another, given that a murder
case under his jurisdiction was covered up.
All in all, Bo's political career is
finished. He is not elected as a deputy to the
CCP's 18th congress. That means there is no chance
for him to be "elected" into the party's new
Central Committee, let alone the Politburo and its
Standing Committee.
All signs suggest that
Bo will face criminal charges after the 18th party
congress, whatever these charges are. The new
leadership certainly would not want to see such an
ambitious and ruthless guy walking around,
threatening their rule.
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