Category Archives: Uncategorised

Council of Europe says to send monitors to Azerbaijani election

SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said it would send an election monitoring team to Azerbaijan despite concerns over its human rights record.

There had been a growing expectation that PACE might follow its bigger European vote monitoring team at the OSCE’s ODHIR and cancel its planned mission to cover parliamentary elections on Nov. 1 in Azerbaijan.

But PACE has a softer reputation than ODIHR and has, in the past, been accused of turning a blind eye to Azerbaijan’s crackdowns on civil society. This year, though, it has vocally challenged the Azerbaijani president to improve human rights.

And Anne Brasseur, head of the Strasbourg-based assembly, confirmed that PACE would send a mission as part of its commitment to monitor democracy in the former Soviet Union.

“We decided to maintain the mission to Azerbaijan knowing that the human rights situation is not really good,” media quote Ms Brasseur as saying.

“We are going to observe several elections — elections in Ukraine, in Turkey, in Belarus, in Kyrgyzstan, and we are also going up observe the elections in Azerbaijan.”

Earlier this month ODIHR pulled out of covering Azerbaijan’s election after, it said, the government had halved its quota of observers. Its withdrawal pushed Europe-Azerbaijan relations — strained over the imprisonment of Azerbaijani activists and journalists — to a new low.

And without the ODHIR’s presence, Ms Brasseur said, Europe would not be able to make a full analysis on veracity of the Nov. 1 election. ODHIR had wanted to send 30 long- term monitors and 350 short-monitors to cover the election. By contrast, PACE’s deployment is far smaller.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Comment: Georgia needs to stop the political persecutions

OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The imprisonment of a former mayor of Tbilisi from the opposition United National Movement (UNM) has underscored fears that Georgia’s governing Georgian Dream (GD) is using the judiciary to settle scores.

Gigi Ugulava’s conviction came just after the Constitutional Court ruled that holding him 14 months in pre-trial detention was unconstitutional and set him free. Twenty-four hours later a court convicted him of using his position to give out hundreds of jobs to UNM loyalists and sentenced him to 4.5 years.

A former youth leader representing the “new guard” that brought Mikheil Saakashvilli to power after the Rose Revolution, Ugulava entered the mayor’s office before he turned 30. After the GD’s victory in parliamentary elections in 2012, he was forced from office in December 2013 amid accusations of misuse of funds.

The conviction of Ugulava is a harsh blow to the UNM in advance of the pivotal October 2016 parliamentary elections, a repeat of the 2012 contest that toppled Saakashvilli and eventually led to his leaving the country and his citizenship rather than face criminal charges.

Like a number of UNM officials, Saakashvilli is now plying his reformism for the new Western darling Ukraine, where he is now governor of Odessa.

Saakashvilli’s energetic reformism in Georgia produced massive overhauls in public administration and policing that are still considered among the best in the non-Baltic former Soviet Union.

But his centralization of power and demonisation of opponents, including through Ugulava’s position as head of the capital’s administration, eventually sparked the Georgian Dream backlash.

Georgia is grappling with the problem common across Eurasia of how to consolidate rule of law after a transition in government.

Uprooting corruption may well require prosecuting former officials, but it is hard to escape the sense that GD is repaying UNM its own repression in kind, rather than building a common polity where diverse parties can compete without fear of persecution if they lose or fall out with the ruling elite.

The cycle of accumulation, revolution, and persecution appears on track to continue which is bad news for Georgian democracy.

By NateSchekkan, programme director at Freedom House

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Woman to lead Muslim community in Georgia

SEPT. 29 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — A village in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, a Muslim area that retains strong links to the North Caucasus, has elected a woman as its leader, media reported.

The election of school teacher Tamar Margoshvili, 55, as head of Duisi village is notable because traditionally only men could lead the village.

“I am not any less skilled compared to the men of the village,” media quoted Ms Margoshvili as saying.

Ms Margoshvili’s promotion is a victory for modernisers who will be heartened that a woman has been able to break through one of the most traditional societies in Georgia.

Renata Skardžiūtė, political scientist at the Georgian Institute of Politics said: “Women started gathering in clubs in different villages, then managed to create women’s council of elders, something quite unprecedented in Muslim communities.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Finnish company wins tender in Kazakhstan

SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Finnish-based Wärtsilä won a tender to build a 40MW combined heat and power (CHP) plant near the Caspian port of Aktau, in west Kazakhstan. The Kazakh company KazAzot will manage the plant, which Wärtsilä plans to complete in late 2016. The plant will power the city of Aktau and its industrial hub.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Iran carmaker fancies Tajikistan

SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iran Khodro Industrial Group (IKCO) will export 500 cars to Tajikistan later this year as a test run ahead of potentially investing in a production site, Iranian media reported. The private company based in Tehran manufactures the Samand brand of family cars. Saeed Tafazzoli, the company’s deputy CEO, said he wants to take the brand into Central Asia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Georgia’ energy minister meets with Gazprom

SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia energy minister Kakhaber Kaladze met up with Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller in Brussels to discuss Georgia’s role as a client and transit country for Russian gas. Media didn’t give details of the meeting but it did speculate that Georgia may be looking for help from the Kremlin to fill its energy deficit.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Kyrgyz minister complains about “flood” of imports

BISHKEK, SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Alluding to concerns about the impact of the Kremlin-lead Eurasian Economic Union, Kyrgyzstan’s deputy PM Vladimir Dil said cheap products from Russia and Kazakhstan have been flooding the market.

Many politicians and government officials in Kyrgyzstan were sceptical in August about the benefits of joining the trade block that includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia. Some said that the Kremlin views the Eurasian Economic Union as a political project and that it pressured Kyrgyzstan, which has become increasingly reliant on Russia for economic and military support, into joining.

Now Mr Dil has stepped out and seemingly openly criticised the Eurasian Economic Union.

“We are seeing a very large flow of goods from Kazakhstan and Russia to our side. The changes in the exchange rates of the rouble and the tenge has turned goods in markets of our allies far cheaper than ours,” Mr Dil said. He didn’t explicitly mention the Eurasian Economic Union but the inference was clear. Kazakhstan cut its peg to a US dollar towards the end of August. The Kazakh tenge immediately lost around a quarter of its value.

A large drop in the value of the tenge and entry to the Eurasian Economic Union, it appears, has exposed Kyrgyzstan to cheap imports.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Kazakh bank completes buyback

SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh lender BTA Bank completed the buyout of its shares from Samruk- Kazyna by buying the final 4.26% stake that Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund owned in it. Samruk-Kazyna bought BTA to save it from collapse during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/9. Over the past year, Kazkommertsbank, another Kazakh bank, has merged with BTA Bank.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Gazprom supplies gas to Azerbaijan

SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian state-owned company Gazprom started supplying natural gas to Azerbaijan. Initial volumes stand at 6m cubic metres per day, the contract between the two parties envisages a maximum yearly supply of 2b cubic metres. Azerbaijan said the contract was struck because of economic growth and an increase in domestic consumption.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Comment: Fate of IRPT in Tajikistan

OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – So the fate of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) appears to have been sealed by the country’s highest court. It is, apparently, a terrorist organisation that helped plan a couple of attacks last month on police checkpoints which killed two dozen people.

A former deputy defence minister has been named as the mastermind of the attacks but the IRPT also played an important role, the court said.

This is the culmination of a ramping up of pressure on the IRPT this year. Its leaders have been forced out of the country, some of its top Dushanbe-based officials have been attacked in the street and various courts have banned it for, firstly not being big enough and secondly for its involvement in the September attacks.

To really prove its case, the Tajik judiciary needs to release more concrete evidence to the international community of the IRPT’s apparent involvement in the attacks. At the moment it just doesn’t stack up.

Instead, as an analyst told the Bulletin’s correspondent in Dushanbe, it feels like a blatant attack on political opponents.

This is dangerous for Tajikistan. What Tajikistan needs is a moderate opposition group that is going to challenge the authorities and President Emomali Rakhmon through the normal channels. What it’ll get instead, with the crushing of opposition groups, is a vacuum that radical Islamists can exploit.

Tajikistan stands at a cross- roads. By banning the IRPT, the authorities are disenfranchising part of its population and taking another step along the wrong path.

By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)