Tag Archives: appointments

Uzbekistan registers presidential candidates

SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s Central Election Commission registered all four parties’ candidates for the upcoming presidential election of Dec. 4. Acting President and PM Shavkat Mirziyoyev of the ruling UzLiDeP is the favourite. The People’s Democratic Party’s candidate Khatamzhon Ketmonov and the Social Democratic Party’s candidate Nariman Umarov both participated in a presidential election last year, pulling in less than 3% of the votes each.

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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Armenia’s PM appoints new adviser

SEPT. 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s new PM Karen Karapetyan named Shushan Sardaryan, ex- press secretary of Gazprom Armenia, as an advisor. Previously, Mr Karapetyan served as the director of Gazprom Armenia, the Russian gas giant’s Armenian subsidiary.

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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Kazakh Baiterek appoints new director

SEPT. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Rustam Kusainov, former adviser to the ministry of economy, was appointed managing director of the government-owned Baiterek holding. Former minister of economy Yerbolat Dossayev is Baiterek’s CEO. Mr Kusainov’s took the IT portfolio at Baiterek. The holding administers several companies in the financial and insurance sectors.

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(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)f

Kazakhs say Massimov was sacked as PM for failures

ASTANA, SEPT. 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — While Western analysts were studying the latest reshuffle of senior Kazakh officials by President Nursultan Nazarbayev to try to decipher what it all means for the succession issue, ordinary Kazakhs were instead saluting the changes as a result of the country’s poor economic health.

A Conway Bulletin correspondent took to the streets in Astana to gauge how the reshuffle was received.

“Changing the PM was a necessary step after failure with land reforms, as the old government was under pressure from people and activists,” said Nurlyayim, a 24-year-old Astana resident.

Earlier this year, thousands of people across Kazakhstan had protested against changes to the land code. Karim Massimov was moved by Mr Nazarbayev from the PM’s position to head of the security services. Most analysts had said that this was an important sign of Mr Nazarbayev’s trust in Mr Massimov. Locals, clearly, saw it differently.

Lyazzat, 29, also said that Mr Massimov had effectively been sacked.

“In my opinion, the president made a major reshuffle because the government led by Mr Massimov failed to elaborate an anti-crisis strategy,” she said.

Rustem, 35, an Astana resident highlighted the move of Imangali Tasmaganbetov from the minister of defence to deputy PM.

“I know Tasmaganbetov as a good politician, who is capable of bringing some positive changes,” he said.

Again this is different from the analysts’ line of thinking who said Mr Tamagambetov had been demoted. Importantly, locals didn’t highlight Dariga Nazarbayeva’s move from deputy PM into the senate as important. Mr Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter is seen as a potential successor.

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(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)

Armenia’s president sacks security chiefs

AUG. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan sacked Hrant Yepiskoposyan, first deputy director of the National Security Service, after partly blaming him for a two week stand-off with gunmen linked to an imprisoned opposition leader who had captured a police station in Yerevan.

The standoff ended after the gunmen gave themselves up but not before it had triggered street battles between supporters of Zhirayr Sefilyan, the imprisoned leader of the radical opposition group Founding Parliament and a hero veteran of the war in the 1990s with Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Dozens of people were arrested during the clashes, the worst in Yerevan for more than eight years.

Three policemen were also killed during the standoff which ended on July 31. Police have said that they were shot dead by the gunmen who captured the police station.

The authorities refused to release Mr Sefilyan, a key demand of the gunmen, but the standoff did trigger a serious constitutional crisis for Mr Sargsyan and has damaged his standing.

Analysts said that the capture of the police station and the support that the hostage-takers appeared to garner from ordinary people showed the level of frustration at Mr Sargsyan and his supporters.

“Many of them were almost certainly taking an opportunity to protest against the status quo, rather than endorsing an act of violence,” analyst Thomas de Waal wrote on the Open Democracy website.

“But even that is an indication of how desperate many mainstream Armenians feel in the face of a political system which they feel has no place for them — and which, due to recent constitutional changes, is likely to see Sargsyan and his team retain their grip on power for many years.”

Since the stand-off ended, Mr Sargsyan has sacked senior security officials. Kevork Kostanyan also resigned as the country’s prosecutor-general.

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(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

Turkmen President reprimands several officials

JULY 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — During a visit to the Mary province, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov reprimanded several government officials and sacked several others for delays to various construction projects, opposition websites reported. Earlier in July, during a visit to the Lebap province, Mr Berdymukhamedov sacked 11 public officials. As Mr Berdymukhamedov fights to contain the fallout from a worsening economic outlook, his rampages against and sackings of government officials intensifies.

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Turkmenistan reorganises its oil and gas ministry

JULY 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a move that took observers by surprise, Turkmenistan abolished its oil and gas ministry which had, officially, run the most profitable economic sector in the country, part of a wider structural reform of the government.

At a cabinet meeting, President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov justified the move as an effort to improve management and governance systems n the energy sector.

Turkmenistan is considered an important stakeholder in the world’s energy nexus, and the move shook analysts. It holds the fourth-largest gas reserves in the world and exports gas mostly to China via pipeline. For over a decade, European and US lobby groups have pushed for a Trans-Caspian Pipeline to pump Turkmen gas to Europe. Turkmenistan is also building TAPI, a gas pipeline to export gas to India, via Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Simon Pirani, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said that aside from internal causes, which are hard to guess, a range of external factors could have played in Turkmenistan’s decision to reorganise its hydrocarbon sector.

“The continuing relationship with China, despite lower off-take of gas than Turkmen officials had hoped, the improved ties with Iran and the quite bad relationship with Russia could all be relevant factors,” he told The Conway Bulletin.

The change, however, is unlikely to shift the way that Turkmenistan does business, a system that revolves around the whims and decisions of President Berdymukhamedov.

“Companies and international organisations are aware that Turkmenistan is a centralised system,” Mr Pirani said.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Turkmen President sacks officials

JULY 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — During a working visit to the north-eastern Lebap province, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov sacked 11 local government officials and reprimanded over a dozen others for failing to keep up with the government’s industrialisation and development plans. Mr Berdymukhamedov has already sacked dozens of public officials this year, in a major restructuring of the country’s regional powerhouses.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Turkmen President continues his firing spree

JUNE 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to to the northern Turkmen province of Dashoguz this month, President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov continued his firing spree by sacking seven officials and reprimanding nine others, the local language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Mr Berymukhamedov has sacked dozens of government officials over the past couple of years as he looks to shift blame over an economy that continues to falter.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Kazakh President sacks senior officials

JUNE 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Barely two weeks after the Kazakh authorities quashed unsanctioned protests with dozens of arrests around the country, President Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked Yerlik Kenenbayev, the Presidential Administration’s police supervisor/adviser, and Nurmakhanbet Isaev, the deputy prosecutor. Mr Nazarbayev did not explain the sackings, but analysts have said it could be linked to the May 21 protests.

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(News report from Issue No. 283, published on June 3 2016)