Tag Archives: government

Turkmen capital opens Arkadag park

JUNE 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – To honour Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s 58th birthday, city authorities in Ashgabat named a new park Arkadag, which means “Protector” and is the moniker he likes to go by.

Critics of Mr Berdymukhamedov have accused him of encouraging his officials to promote a cult of personality, something that he disparaged at the start of this period in power in 2007.

Earlier this year, though, the authorities unveiled a giant statue of Mr Berdymukhamedov on a horse. Television shots have also increasingly showed him berating officials and holding court, emperor-like.

And the new Arkadag park appears to back up this image. The park’s main feature is a large white marble arch with Mr Berdymukhamedov’s portrait in its centre.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Kyrgyz MPs sack judge

JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – BISHKEK — MPs in Kyrgyzstan voted to sack a judge over a row about biometric data in what civil activists described as more evidence of parliament’s authoritarian tendencies.

Protesters gathered in the centre of Bishkek to demonstrate against the apparent sacking of Klara Sooronkulova, a judge in the Constitutional Chamber of the Kyrgyz Supreme Court.

She had been working on a document that would have declared a law brought in last year forcing everybody in Kyrgyzstan to give their fingerprint data to the state as unconstitutional.

“Sooronkulova was dismissed only because she expressed her opinion as an independent judge,” shouted Nurbek Toktakunov, a lawyer, at the protest.

The law that Ms Sooronkulova took umbridge with decreed that only those people who had submitted biometric data could vote in a parliamentary election set for October.

She said that this was unlawful. Apparently irritated by her reluctance to accept the law on biometric data, the government forced MPs to vote three times to sack her. She survived the first two efforts.

“This is a clear evidence of complete arbitrariness,” Ms Sooronkulova told a newspaper.

It’s unlikely that protests will gather momentum but the independence of the judiciary from the executive power has been damaged in Kyrgyzstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Armenia debates on debt calculation change

JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – YEREVAN — Armenia’s government wants to change the way it measures its national debt, a con trick, its opponents have said, which is aimed at massaging the numbers by cutting out the Central Bank’s borrowings.

The Armenian parliament passed a first reading of a bill which will ditch the current state debt and instead measure the national debt.

Atom Janjughazyan, deputy finance minister, said the change was needed to meet international standards.

“The sole purpose of the bill is to improve the financial statistics of the State in accordance with international practice,” he said in parliament.

But opposition MPs said the change was merely a cover for allowing the government to borrow so that it can ease itself out of the current financial downturn, triggered by a fall in the Russian economy, the main economic driver for the former Soviet Union.

And this viewpoint appears to be backed by international economists. Teresa Daban Sanchez, the IMF representative in Armenia, told an Armenian newspaper the country’s external debt is now uncomfortable.

“The government needs to take measures so that the debt against the GDP index begins to fall,” she said.

Armenia’s government has previously said it will borrow to prop itself up through the current economic downturn. Under government rules its debt must be below 60% of GDP.

Mr Janjughazyan, the deputy finance minister, said under the new system, Armenia’s debt measured $4.4b against a GDP of $10.9m, comfortably below the 60% mark.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Georgian government cuts national budget

JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI – Georgia’s finance ministry said it will cut the national budget by 140m lari ($53m), 1.75% of the original budget, because of an economic slowdown.

Cuts will be made across government but hardest hit will be education, agriculture and the interior ministry.

PM Irakli Garibashvili said the government should have revised its budget earlier.

“Almost all the countries in the region had to revise their budgets because of the crisis,” he told parliament.

The government said that Georgia’s economy would grow by around 2% this year, far below the 5% initially anticipated.

A downturn in Russia’s economy and a slump in energy prices has hit Georgia hard. It is unclear if these cuts will be enough or more will follow.

The popularity of the ruling Georgian Dream has been slip- ping, in part because of the economic slowdown.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Kazakhstan pays German politicians

JUNE 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is paying former senior German politicians large salaries to whitewash its reputation in Europe, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported quoting emails it has seen from an Austria-based law firm. The magazine named former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, former president Horst Koehler and former interior minister Otto Schily.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Azerbaijani activist flees to Switzerland

JUNE 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Swiss embassy in Baku organised for Emin Huseynov, an Azerbaijani dissident and critic of President Ilham Aliyev’s administration, to fly out to Switzerland with Swiss foreign minister Didier Burkhalter. Mr Huseynov had been sheltering in the Swiss embassy since mid-August when police had tried to arrest him on drug-related charges.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Majoritarians to stay in Georgian parliament

JUNE 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream coalition said it won’t scrap the MPs elected via a first- past-the-post system for the 2016 parliamentary election. Last month the Constitutional Court said it backed reforming the voting system to make it fairer.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

New labour laws anger Kazakh workers’ unions

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh government presented new rules for workers which reduces their rights and forces unions to re-register with a government institution, a move which could damage relations between labour groups and companies.

Tamara Duysenova, the minister for health and social development, presented the bill at the National Congress of Trade Unions in Astana.

“The new provisions are in line with the spirit of the Law On Trade Unions approved last year,” she said.

The Unions disagree. Lyudmila Ekzarkhova, an official at the Confederation of Free Trade Unions, said: “These measures would put independent unions under the thumb of a government- appointed body.”

Opposition groups have criticised the measures which free employers from paying overtime work and cut benefits for injured workers.

The new law will also force independent trade unions to re-register under the state- controlled Federation of Trade Unions. Strikes called by unregistered trade unions will be illegal.

Relations between big companies and workers in Kazakhstan are already delicate.

Ever since oil workers went on strike in the town of Zhanaozen in the west of the country in 2011, a strike which triggered a riot and then a street battle with police that killed at least 15 people, workers’ rights in Kazakhstan have been strained.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Azerbaijani electricity may rise

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officials in Azerbaijan are considering increasing the electricity tariff to a more equitable market rate, media reported. Electricity across the former Soviet Union is generally subsidised although governments are reducing this, much to the irritation of ordinary people.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Azerbaijan orders OSCE to close office in Baku

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Azerbaijan ordered the OSCE to close its office in Baku and barred Amnesty from visiting the city, triggering fresh criticism of its civil rights record shortly before President Ilham Aliyev opens the inaugural European Games.

Azerbaijan and the West have been locked in an acrimonious row over civil rights which has threatened to damage their fragile relationship.

Now the OSCE, as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe is more commonly known, said that the Azerbaijani authorities had ordered it to close its Baku office.

“The government of Azerbaijan has notified the OSCE of its intention to close the organisation’s office in Baku,” AFP quoted the spokesman for the OSCE Baku office, Rashad Huseynov, as saying.

This takes relations between Europe and Azerbaijan to a new low. Among other roles, the OSCE is Europe’s democracy watchdog. It evaluates elections against European democratic standards.

Azerbaijan already has form, though. At the end of last year it raided and closed the office of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

London-based Amnesty also said it had cancelled a trip to Baku after the Azerbaijani authorities said that its delegation was not welcome to visit until after the European Games.

It’s a delicate relationship between Europe and Azerbaijan. While it may not like Azerbaijan’s attitude towards dissenters, Europe wants to buy its gas.

For Mr Aliyev, these are frustrating times.

He wants to increase the profile of Azerbaijan through sport and had hoped that the European Games, set to open on June 12, would act as the perfect launch.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)