Madam Gu is readied for her close up

She' giving off some very 'Sunset Boulevard' vibes in this brief Xinhua account of her murder charge. 'It's the Communist Party that got small...'

Investigation results show that Bogu Kailai, one of the defendants, and her son surnamed Bo had conflicts with the British citizen Neil Heywood over economic interests. Worrying about Neil Heywood's threat to her son's personal security, Bogu Kailai along with Zhang Xiaojun, the other defendant, poisoned Neil Heywood to death.

The facts of the two defendants' crime are clear, and the evidence is irrefutable and substantial. Therefore, the two defendants should be charged with intentional homicide.

Based on the small amount the Communist Party is telling us, and based on the metric that the Communist Party can and will do what it likes to both Madam Gu and Bo Xilai, what can we tell?

Th charge is being heard in Hefei, in Anhui province, which is as far as you can get from aither Beijing or Chongqing and as near to nowhere as somewhere gets. Not really surprising: they wouldnt want her put on trial in Beijing at the time of the big handover, nor in Chongqing, where everything is now supposed to be business as usual.

Bo Xilai has not been pulled into the charge sheet against Madam Gu. It seems clear now that they intend to do him for discipline violations, an internal Communist Party matter, rather than secular crimes. James called it right back in April when he said that it was unlikely that the country's top leaders would break the unofficial post-Mao consensus about not killing one another. I still think that the most likely outcome for Bo is permanent house arrest, Zhao Ziyang style. 

Madam Gu is facing a capital charge, of which she will be found guilty. That means an an automatic death sentence. I don't think the truce at the top extends to spouses, but we'll see.

Xinhua is still using that weird 'Bogu' formulation for Madam Gu. I'm not sure if this is the intention, but the term seems to link the two in depravity while all the substantial charges accrue to the wife. Reformers and party rightists were very keen earlier on to push a red terror narrative about Bo's rule in Chongqing. This seems to have fallen flat. Nor has there been any peep from CDIC's investigation into Bo's busines cronies like Xu MIng. So far, the only thing against him still seems to be failure to control his wife. This is why I think they may shoot Madam Gu. By treating Bo and Gu as a kind of two headed creature, the Party can cover lenience towards the first by severity towards the second.

Comments

[JamesP]

Automatic death sentence, as I've said before, can very easily be "death sentence with two year reprieve." That's still what I suspect will happen here.

[chris y]

What happens after two years?

[jamie]

You're normally given life imprisonment, possibly alleviated by medical parole if you're important enough.