Bo charges highlight party's challenge More than six months after removing Bo Xilai as Communist party secretary of the municipality of Chongqing, the national leadership has finally given a fuller explanation of why and how he is being purged. China's politburo, the 25-member body which elects the party's top leadership, announced after meeting on Friday that Mr Bo would be handed over to the judiciary to answer a catalogue of devastating accusations ranging from abuse of power to corruption, and covering almost his entire political career. The decision means that Mr Bo will stand trial, and could well face life in prison. "What we see here are not yet formal charges - those will have to be formulated by the prosecutors - but a conviction on charges along the lines of the accusations raised against Bo Xilai by the party leadership could add up to a life-long prison sentence," said a criminal lawyer who has defended senior officials before. Until now, Mr Bo had been in the hands of the party's internal discipline inspection commission, a body which is not part of the judiciary but whose investigations and decisions carry at least as much weight as those of the courts for party members and officials. "The prosecutors are now expected to present a case according to the party's directions," said a retired legal official who once headed the anti-corruption unit of a provincial prosecutors" office. Following the trials of Gu Kailai, Mr Bo's wife, and Wang Lijun, Chongqing's former police chief, Chinese legal experts say the party will try to give the procedures against Mr Bo the appearance of maximum transparency and legal propriety. Gu received a suspended death sentence in August after being found guilty of murdering British business consultant, Neil Heywood. Mr Wang was sentenced to 15 years in prison this month for helping Gu cover up that murder, for abuse of power and for taking bribes. State media called both trials open and transparent, but the foreign media were excluded from the hearings, and relatives and supporters of both defendants have decried the proceedings as unfair and absurd. But the impact of the politburo's decision reaches far beyond Mr Bo's personal fate. By sealing his fate, the party leadership has also signalled it has settled its fiercest power struggle in a generation, and cleared the way for the country's once-in-a-decade leadership transition. Even before the revelation of the Heywood murder by Mr Wang to a US consulate in February kicked off the investigation against Mr Bo, the flamboyant politician had caused trouble. He had openly campaigned for top office with a leftist policy agenda at odds with the preferences of the majority of other leaders. Senior party members say he also conspired against some of these, including heir apparent Xi Jinping. The party leadership's challenge since they removed Mr Bo from office in March was to build a strong case against him that was sufficiently credible to finish his political career, but also to limit the damage to the party's overall image. The accusations the politburo has presented exceed the expectations of many. Some observers had wondered whether the leadership would shy away from even dragging Mr Bo into court, and wondered whether he would just be kept under house arrest for the rest of his life like Zhao Ziyang, the former party chief who fell as a result of his support for the Tiananmen student democracy movement in 1989. But not only has the party decided that Mr Bo must stand trial, it has also tabled charges reaching far beyond Mr Bo's last post in Chongqing - his "serious mistakes" were committed in jobs including his mayoral post in the north-eastern city of Dalian, his subsequent leadership of Liaoning province and during his tenure as minister of commerce, according to Xinhua, the official news agency. Mr Bo's many critics, especially anti-corruption campaigners and legal activists, will rejoice. But they are not the likely target of the tough decision. Mr Bo still commands a large and loyal support base in the places where he once served and among broader left-leaning groups in the population. Only if at least some of them can be convinced of Mr Bo's guilt can the incoming leadership gain the stability the party craves.