JUNE 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Almazbek Kadyrkulov, chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s State Property Management Fund quit abruptly after a year in the job. Mr Kadyrkulov did not explain his resignation but he had recently received harsh criticism from PM Sooronbay Jeenbekov and other MPs. The Fund is in charge of managing state assets.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Court of Human Rights said in a ruling that Georgian prosecutors abused their power during the pre-trial detention of Georgia’s ex-interior minister Vano Merabishvili in an effort to extract information regarding the unrelated trial against former President Mikhail Saakashvili. Merabishvili was arrested in May 2013 on charges of vote fraud and embezzlement of party funds. He said the charges were politically motivated.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Statistics Committee said that immigration into Kazakhstan decreased by 25%, while emigration out of the country increased by 16% in the first four months of the year, highlighting a rapid outward pressure for Kazakhstan’s population. Net outflow measured 3,521 people. It did not give a reason for the high outflow but it may be connected to the poor economic conditions.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Active Batumi, a hotel and entertainment company, will build a new five-star hotel in Batumi, Georgia’s tourist hotspot by the end of the year. The new hotel will hold the Wyndham brand, which belongs to a US-based hotel and resorts chain. This would be the first Wyndham-branded hotel in Georgia. In Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the only two other Wyndham hotels are located in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
DUSHANBE, JUNE 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A group of Tajik academics launched a staunch defence of the government’s crackdown on the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) after the European Parliament passed a resolution criticising it.
The authorities in Tajikistan outlawed the IRPT last year. Last month a court handed the IRPT leaders several years in prison for attempting to organise a coup. In response to the prison sentences, the European Parliament said it was concerned about freedom of expression in Tajikistan.
Tajikistan’s foreign ministry responded by criticising Europe for double standards over terrorism and a group of academics released a statement blaming the IRPT for a civil war in the 1990s and saying that it controlled the European Parliament.
A Dushanbe-based analyst, though, said that like student protests which sprung up this year to promote the government, the authorities were influencing the academics.
“These letters of support are aimed at pleasing the authorities and promoting careers,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Employees of Turkmenistan’s state-owned oil and gas companies said they have not received salaries for months, the opposition Alternative News Turkmenistan website reported. Previous reports had said that state employees had not received salaries and had been forced to accept state bonds instead.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The UN General Assembly unanimously voted to give Turkmenistan one of the 19 vice-chairs for its 71st session, due to start next September, a PR coup for Turkmenistan’s neutrality policy.
Turkmenistan had already served as vice-chair of the General Assembly in 2007, 2009, and 2013 and it was quick to laud the move as an accolade.
“This is a testament to the international prestige of the Turkmen state, the effectiveness of its foreign policy based on the principles of positive neutrality,” it said on one of its official news websites.
The country’s official neutral policy, though, may be weakening. Security worries in Afghanistan have pushed Turkmenistan. Its army organised a massive military exercise in March, the largest in Turkmenistan’s history.
A representative of Armenia was also elected to serve a deputy chair of the General Assembly.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The issue of gay rights and gay marriage in Georgia has become increasingly heated. Each side loathes the other. There is little dialogue but plenty of insults and the odd clash.
Now a move by anti-gay right activists to try to enshrine marriage in Georgia’s constitution between a man and a woman through a referendum threatens to bring this animosity to a head. And at a dangerous time.
Even at the best of times, Georgia is a tinderbox. If the activists do collect the 200,000 signatures needed to hold a referendum the vote is likely to take place on the same day as a tense parliamentary election – Oct. 8.
Georgia is a conservative society and it is likely that the activists will be able to raise the 200,000 signatures. It was always going to be a long, fractious parliamentary election campaign. The prospect of a referendum on the same day deliberating on gay rights could make it explosive.
The role of the powerful Orthodox Church and various politicians and their rhetoric will be crucial in managing the various moods.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
TBILISI, JUNE 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed visa-free access to the EU’s Schengen area for Georgia but linked it to a similar deal for Ukraine.
Ms Merkel’s statement during a meeting with Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili in Berlin could be seen as a boost to Georgia’s aim of gaining visa-free access to the European Union this year but the link to Ukraine is a complication.
It also comes a week after German politicians said they would block Georgia’s application for visa-free access because of links to organised crime.
“I expect that we can agree swiftly on the issue of visa liberalisation for citizens of Georgia,” media quoted Ms Merkel as saying.
One of Georgia’s main foreign policy objectives is to join the EU. Whether or not this is achievable is of secondary importance to most Georgian politicians to just making progress and visa-free Schengen access is considered a major prize.
But, significantly, Ms Merkel also underlined that she linked Georgia’s application to Ukraine’s
“For me, it is significant that Association Agreements between the EU and Georgia and also with Ukraine were signed at the same time,” Reuters quoted Ms Merkel as saying in reference to agreements signed in June 2014. “It is not very easy to explain to one country how things are with another.”
The problem for Georgia is that the European Commission is less likely to grant Ukraine visa-free access. Ukraine has a population of 45m, compared to Georgia’s 4.5m. It is also the focus of a geopolitical struggle with Russia.
Analysts have said that Ms Merkel may deliberately be trying to slow the process.
The flow of migrants from Syria into Germany and Turkey’s drive for visa-free Schengen access have made migration a politically sensitive issue forMs Merkel.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev will meet for talks on the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in St Petersburg on June 20, a Kremlin spokesman said. Russian president Vladimir Putin will also host the talks. His presence increases the chances that a meaningful deal may be drawn up.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
