BEIJING: A court in eastern China said it would announce a decision on Friday on whether to accept an appeal by ousted former senior politician Bo Xilai over his guilty verdict and life sentence on charges of bribery, corruption and abuse of power.
Bo, once a rising star in China’s leadership circles who had cultivated a following through his populist, quasi-Maoist policies, was jailed for life in September after a dramatic fall from grace that shook the ruling Communist Party.
His career was stopped short last year by a murder scandal in which his wife, Gu Kailai, was convicted of poisoning a British businessman, Neil Heywood, who had been a family friend.
In a brief statement posted on its website, the high court in the eastern province of Shandong, where Bo was first tried, said the decision would be announced on Friday at 10am It gave no other details. Bo’s guilty verdict is unlikely to be overturned as the courts are controlled by the Communist Party, which long ago pronounced him guilty. A source with direct knowledge of the case told Reuters it was unclear if Bo’s sentence might be reduced.
“There is that possibility,” said the source, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The source earlier had said that Bo appealed immediately after the sentence was announced. The court said in early October that it had formally accepted the appeal.
President Xi Jinping, who took office in March, will likely want the Bo affair settled because the next few weeks are critical for his government.
At a closed-door party plenum next month, Xi will push for more economic reforms and he needs unstinting support from the party’s elite 200-member Central Committee. REUTERS
