MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are close to signing a deal on the so called Trans-Eurasian Information Super Highway (TASIM) that aims to lay a superfast broadband cable linking Europe and Asia, media reported. The Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan deal aims to span the Caspian Sea.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan cancelled daylight saving time, first introduced in 1997. It’s unclear, specifically, why Azerbaijan decided to abandon its daylight saving time. News reports said that Azerbaijan’s time would remain at GMT +4.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In the past weeks, European Union representatives had said soothing, nice words to Azerbaijan’s leadership, especially in light of its key participation in the Southern Gas Corridor infrastructure complex, which will bring Caspian Sea gas to Europe by 2019.
Human rights advocates in the West had lobbied loudly for a hardline position regarding the government’s crackdown on political freedoms.
But the EU chose to avoid the critical topic and went on talking business.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev’s decision to free some political prisoners must be read as a payment in kind to the EU’s soft hand on human rights.
While welcoming the gesture, people in Azerbaijan are still waiting for the release of Ilgar Mammadov, Khadija Ismayilova and Intigam Aliyev, three political prisoners that were not pardoned.
By pardoning political prisoners, the government is holding out an olive branch towards the West, more than towards domestic actors. The struggle for them, for independent media and for opposition parties, is not over just yet.
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Editorial from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Central Bank left interest rates unchanged at 17% to give the tenge currency extra support. At its monthly policy-setting meeting, the Central Bank said that supporting the currency was a higher priority than reducing the cost of borrowing. Analysts had argued that the interest rate was set too high.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Central Bank picked Koba Gvenetadze, a former IMF banker, to be its chief, replacing Giorgi Kadagidze whose term finished in February. The following day, President Giorgi Margvelashvili approved Mr Gvenetadze’s 7-year term at the Bank. Georgia’s economy has been under increased pressure from the falling value of the lari and rising inflation linked to a fall in oil prices and recession in Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Appeal Court cut a jail sentence handed down to former PM Serik Akhmetov, jailed last year for corruption, to eight years from10 years. Akhmetov was jailed last year in a high-profile case. He was PM for 18 months until April 2014 and was then defence minister. The case drew attention to Kazakhstan’s reputation for corruption.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 11/14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI — Georgian government officials and opposition MPs appear to have been the target of a blackmail plot after a series of sex tapes were posted online.
Videos of two Georgian women MPs and two men from the ruling Georgian Dream coalition, apparently having extramarital sex, were uploaded to Youtube.
The videos were taken down quickly but not before news of their existence had gone viral. Georgia’s conservative society was both outraged by the videos of the officials having sex and also at the breach of privacy.
Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili said the security agencies had detained five people in connection with the plot.
“All the law enforcement agencies are involved in the investigation, we need to put an end to terrorising the society with such videos once and for all,” he said.
News reports said the originators of the videos contacted their targets before uploading the videos, demanding that they resign from their posts.
For Georgians the emergence of the videos is a reminder of the old- school Soviet- style pressure techniques which they thought they had left behind.
It’s unclear if the blackmail plot is linked to a parliamentary election planned for later this year.
Privacy, surveillance, and blackmail are all hot issues with the upcoming elections next October. The current government campaigned strongly against surveillance of citizens and politicians before they came to power in 2012.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Senate ratified a trade deal with the European Union which Kazakh foreign minister Yerlan Idrissov said had far reaching implications. Mr Idrissov said: “The most important part of the new treaty is the trade section, which offers additional guarantees of stability to our European partners and will help raise Kazakhstan’s investment appeal.”
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – British Airways will cut its route to Baku from April 29 because it has become unprofitable, another indication of the severity of the economic downturn that has hit Central Asia and the South Caucasus in general and Azerbaijan in particular.
Baku is BP’s major regional hub and British Airways had been flying six times a week direct to Baku from Heathrow. Its decision to cut the route, which has been serviced by a British airline since 1995, further cuts the region off from Europe.
Over the past three years, British Airways has cut routes to Bishkek, Tbilisi and Almaty. By stopping flights to Baku it pulls back from the region altogether.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state- owned energy firm, said work at the Kashagan offshore oil field is on schedule and it expects the field to be ready for production by October 2016. Kazmunaigas’ CEO Sauat Mynbayev said he is still unsure about the volumes that Kashagan will produce in November-December 2016. The consortium developing Kashagan, which includes Kazmunaigas, Shell, Exxon, Total, Eni, Inpex and CNPC, has been replacing damaged pipes.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
