By RONG REN
Politics Correspondent
CHONGQING – (China Daily Show) Flamboyant politician Bo Xilai has stunned Politburo members by dramatically attempting to return to work as if nothing had happened.
The former Chongqing Party Secretary was stripped of his post earlier this month, and last night state media announced Bo had committed “serious discipline violations.” Investigators have also re-opened the case of Neil Heywood, a British businessman linked to Bo’s family who died in unusual circumstances last November.
Despite this, co-workers were shocked this morning to see Bo blithely stroll into the offices of the Chongqing Municipality Administrative Affairs Bureau, complaining that his card wasn’t working.
Bo then burst into the office of his dozing replacement Zhang Dejiang and demanded to know what he was doing.
“It was chaos,” said one eyewitness. “Zhang was stammering and sweating, and kept trying to tuck in his shirt and adjust his glasses. But Bo bitch-slapped him twice, then ordered him to pick up four lattes from downstairs – and to get a receipt this time.”
Bo resumed office for a full 36 minutes.
In that short time, the charismatic Maoist ex-leader ordered all universities be closed, sacked the city’s entire Scientific Development Unit and replaced them with a team of hard-working farmers, and urged the proletariat to rise up and challenge officials for their lack of revolutionary zeal and general bourgeois sleaziness.
“We got to work immediately!” said HR manager Lucy Xiu. “I quickly launched an struggle session with my landlord and managed to get our deposit back.”
Order was restored only when a security team arrived from Beijing. After writing a short self-criticism, Bo agreed to leave but promised he’d return shortly.
“I first thought Bo had been properly restituted or maybe even pulled off a coup,” admitted one intern. “But after I checked the Internet and saw there were no rumours, I knew it was probably a hoax. Didn’t stop me from attacking my professor, though.”
Bo’s audacious move has won admirers in some quarters.
“He has the foreigner style,” said one Western-educated secretary. “I think Bo must have been trying to do a ‘George’” – a reference to the classic Seinfeld episode in which George Constanza dramatically quits his job, then attempts to bluff his way back. In China, this is sometimes known as “pulling a rehabilitated cadre after political purge.”
In the sitcom, George is eventually fired; in real life, however, Bo was wheeled out of the office in a hockey mask, strapped to a gurney, and placed in an unmarked van, where he faces months of elaborate, ritualistic and ultimately tedious interrogation.
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