Category Archives: Central Asia & South Caucasus News

People lose faith in Kazakhstan’s healthcare after two deaths

ALMATY, APRIL 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Two deaths in hospitals in Almaty this year have unnerved the normally phlegmatic residents of Kazakhstan’s most populous city.

Investigations have been launched into the death of 26-year- old Aleksey Gubenko who died in March at a private hospital while being treated for sinusitis and Yerzhan Kulbayev who died in a state-run hospital in January after having his kidney removed, apparently illegally to pay off a loan.

Trust in Kazakhstan’s healthcare system is waning, whether it is private or state. An opinion poll in January by the demos.kz website showed that 65% of people rated the healthcare at three out of five or lower and 61% of the respondents said that the healthcare staff were not competent.

For 24-year-old Leila, an accountant, news of the two deaths in hospital did not come as a surprise.

“I do not have any illusions regarding Kazakhstan’s healthcare system, so I am not surprised with these cases,” she said. “Obviously, I do not trust our doctors and state hospitals have big queues of people waiting too.”

Sergey, a taxi driver, said that it was better not to be sick in Kazakhstan and to avoid doctors.

“We are all mortal, you never know what will happen to you in half an hour,” he said.

“It is just better not to be sick and be less engaged with the healthcare system.”

Poor morale among staff and underfunding have characterised Kazakhstan’s healthcare system. In 2015, Almas Kurmanov, the then head of budget at the ministry of health told media that the healthcare budget needed to be doubled or tripled. He said that Kazakhstan was spending $254/person on health compared to an average in the OECD of $2,400/person.

Earlier this year too, five senior executives, including the CEO, at the state-run medicine distribution company SK-Pharmacy were sacked and arrested for bribe-taking.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Nazarbayev wants Kazakh language to adopt Latin

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APRIL 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered officials to start preparing to switch Kazakh to the Latin alphabet by 2025. Mr Nazarbayev has long wanted to make the switch in what he sees as a part of a modernisation drive. Kazakh and Russian are both official languages in Kazakhstan, although Kazakh is becoming increasingly widespread. The switch to the Latin alphabet will bring Kazakhstan in line with its Central Asian neighbours, other than Kyrgyzstan, who all use it.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Uzbek government set up to attract investments

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APRIL 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev has signed a law on setting up a government unit specifically to attract foreign investment, media reported. The State Committee for Investments will also be tasked with ensuring that the foreign investment is directed properly. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, in power since September last year, has said that he wants to attract more foreign investors.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Bridge-banks set up to help ailing banking sector in Azerbaijan

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APRIL 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijani MPs have passed a law allowing banks weighed down by debt to transfer their good assets to so-called bridge-banks, media reported. The concept, which inadvertently suggests that the Azerbaijani banking crisis is deepening, suggests that these bridge-banks are then able to re- package the sound assets into new banks which can then be sold on. Several small banks have been closed down in Azerbaijan over the past few years and the government this year bought a controlling state in International Bank of Azerbaijan, the country’s largest bank.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Azerbaijan BTC throughput falls

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APRIL 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company Socar said that the amount of oil pumped through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) had fallen by more than 11% in the first three months of the year, media reported. The fall is linked to a drop in oil being produced by fields in the region, a drop triggered by the collapse in oil prices from $110/barrel in mid-2014 to under $30/barrel in Jan. 2016 and around $50/barrel now. Azearbaijan has exported less oil via BTC and Kazakh producers have turned to the cheaper CPC pipeline that runs around the Caspian Sea to Novorossiya on Russia’s Black Sea coast.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)f

Georgian president rows with ex-GD colleagues

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TBILISI, APRIL 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In his annual address to Parliament, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili accused the ruling Georgian Dream party of hampering the democratic development of the country, reflecting the growing rift between the head of state and his former parliamentary colleagues.

Mr Margvelashvili main frustrations were the concentration of power in the hands of the ruling party, the lack of dialogue with the opposition and constitutional reforms which will turn the presidency into a token position.

Last year the Georgian Dream crushed its main rival, the United National Movement party of former president Mikheil Saakashvili in a parliamentary election. It won an outright majority but Mr Margvelashvili said that it had failed to achieve any lasting good despite its dominance.

“Last November, I addressed the newly elected parliament and said the formation of a constitutional majority raised the threat of concentration of power, but at the same time raised the prospect of bold reforms and initiatives,” he said. “What do we actually have five months later? The potential threat has become a serious problem, and the dynamics of reforms are not impressive.”

Mr Margvelashvili was elected president in 2013 as Georgian Dream’s candidate. However, his relationship with the ruling party has collapsed.

Ghia Nodia, professor of politics and director of the International School of Caucasus Studies in Ilia Chavchavadze State University in Tbilisi, said that the row between Mr Margvelashvili and Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man and the power behind the Georgian Dream, had become a personal matter.

“The President is considered to be a traitor,” he said. “I don’t think the President wanted a conflict but to be loyal to Ivanishvili is a condition of the Georgian Dream coalition but Margvelashvili decided to be independent and to be a protector of the constitution.”

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Gazprom pays knockdown price for Uzbek gas

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APRIL 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian media reported that Gazprom will pay only $125/1,000 cubic metres of gas from Uzbekistan, a relatively low amount. The supply deal between Uzbekistan and Gazprom had been struck at the beginning of April when Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev visited Moscow and was hailed as a groundbreaking agreement. Analysts, though, have said that a price of $125/1,000 cubic metres is low and represents only $2.5b/year for the five year contract.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Swedish police arrest Uzbek for terror attack

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APRIL 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swedish police arrested a 39-year-old Uzbek man and accused him of hijacking a truck which he then drove into a department store in central Stockholm, killing four people.

The unnamed man was the second Central Asian to be accused of attacking and killing civilians in a week. On April 3 an Uzbek man from Kyrgyzstan blew himself up on the St Petersburg metro, killing 15 people.

The attack in Sweden has again turned the international spotlight onto Central Asia as a fertile recruitment ground for the radical IS group.

Analysts and experts have said much of the IS recruitment occurs in Russia where young men from Central Asia move to find work.

Central Asia’s leaders have been talking up the difficulties of stopping recruitment drives by the IS extremist group. Last year, on a visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Bishkek, Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev said that the recruitment system was proving more robust than anticipated.

Last week, in the aftermath of the St Petersburg attack, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev pledged to crackdown on terrorist recruitment.

“What happened in St. Petersburg is a terrorist attack and terrorism does not have any borders, nationality or faith. This is our common pain, and this signals that we need to join forces here,” he was quoted as saying.

Details of the Swedish attacker are still emerging but media has reported that he was a failed asylum seeker who had been marked down for deportation. He avoided police, though, by giving them a false address and moving to a suburb of Stockholm known for its migrant communities.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Priest accuses Georgia of unfair trial

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APRIL 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Archpriest Giorgi Mamaladze, the priest waiting for his trial on charges of attempting to poison a senior member of Patriach Ilia II’s inner circle, has said that he is going to apply to the European Court for Human Rights against what he has said is an unfair process. Archpriest Mamaladze was arrested this year trying to board a flight to Germany with cyanide, a case that has captivated the Georgian public.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Armenia’s Republican party wins the election

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YEREVAN, APRIL 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Republican Party of President Serzh Sargsyan was confirmed as the winner of a parliamentary election in Armenia on April 2.

Armenia’s Central Election Commission said the Republican party had won just under 50% of the vote (55 seats), the generally pro-government Tsarukyan Alliance won 27% of the vote (30 seats), the opposition Way Out Alliance nearly 8% (9 seats) and the pro-government Armenian Revolutionary Federation 6.6% (7 seats).

No other political bloc passed the 7% threshold to win seats or the 5% threshold needed to be breached by an individual political party in an election that was marked by alleged vote buying. There were no reports of the protests that had been expected.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)