As expected, Bo Xilai, the disgraced former party boss of
Chongqing and a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo, was found guilty of
corruption and abuse of power by a court in the city of Jinan on September 22.
Despite a dramatic and vigorous self-defense
put up by Bo during his four-day trial in late August, the three-judge panel,
who had no real discretion in determining Bo’s fate, was not swayed. That
politics, not the law, was in charge of the trial of Bo was made subtly clear
by two minor but revealing oddities about the manner in which the verdict
itself was announced. Normally, such verdicts are made public on a workday, but
September 22 was a Sunday. Unless we believe that Chinese judges are an
unusually hardworking lot and the Bo verdict had to be announced on a day
usually reserved for rest and relaxation, it is safe to assume that they were
instructed by higher authorities to issue the verdict on that particular day.
There is further evidence that the verdict originated in Beijing, not Jinan,
because the official news agency, Xinhua, reported the verdict roughly 40
seconds before the court released it via its weibo (the Chinese equivalent
of Twitter)……..To Read More…...
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