DEC. 17 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Three political parties in Kyrgyzstan formed a coalition government, the first under a new constitution that shifted power to parliament from the president. Almazbek Atambayev, leader of the Social Democrats and an ally of President Roza Otunbayeva, will become the prime minister and head of a coalition with Respublika and Ata Zhurt.
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(News report from Issue No. 20, published on Dec. 20 2010)
DEC. 9 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will double export duty on oil to $40/tonne from Jan. 1 2011, the Kazakh finance ministry told Bloomberg. Kazakhstan introduced a $20/tonne duty in May 2008 but ditched it in Jan. 2009 when oil prices fell sharply. It reintroduced the tax in August 2010.
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(News report from Issue No. 19, published on Dec. 13 2010)
DEC. 3 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s new Parliament narrowly failed to elect Omurbek Tekebayev, head of the Ata Meken party, as its speaker. The loss triggered the collapse of a three-party coalition which had hoped to form a new government.
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(News report from Issue No. 18, published on Dec. 6 2010)
DEC. 6 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Perhaps US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke too soon.
“There are many who say parliamentary democracy, true parliamentary democracy, cannot work in Central Asia or in many other places in the world,” Ms Clinton said in Bishkek on Dec. 2.
“We reject that and we think Kyrgyzstan has proven that it can.”
The next day, a three-party coalition set up on Nov. 30 to form a government collapsed when its candidate to become parliament’s speaker, Omurbek Tekebayev, failed to secure the necessary majority in a parliamentary vote. Mr Tekebayev won 58 out of 120 votes.
The defeat undermined Social Democratic party leader Almazbek Atambayev, a close ally of President Roza Otunbayeva, who wanted to become the PM and head of a government coalition with the Respublika party and Ata Meken.
Kyrgyzstan — notoriously fractious and unstable — is now running out of time to form a government since an indecisive election on Oct. 10.
The Ata Zhurt party, dominated by politicians from the south and opposed to constitutional reform away from a presidential system, won the most votes but has been excluded from potential coalitions. And so on Dec. 4 Ms Otunbayeva turned to the head of the Respublika party, Omurbek Babanov, and asked him to patch together a coalition government within three weeks.
This is the Kyrgyz parliament’s second coalition building effort — under Kyrgyzstan’s new constitution, three failures triggers new elections.
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(News report from Issue No. 18, published on Dec. 6 2010)
NOV. 19 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – A judge in the United States dismissed charges of corruption and fraud against businessman James Giffen, who had been accused of giving $84m in bribes to Kazakh officials in exchange for oil concessions during the 1990s. Prosecutors linked senior members of the Kazakh government, including President Nursultan Nazarbayev, to the case.
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(News report from Issue No. 16, published on Nov. 22 2010)
NOV. 22 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan cancelled a contract to develop its second largest gold deposit signed in 2006 between the state gold mining company and an Austrian company, Reuters reported. Kyrgyzstan said the consortium had failed to develop infrastructure as part of an agreed $200m deal. It plans to re-auction the tender.
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(News report from Issue No. 16, published on Nov. 22 2010)
NOV. 11 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva asked her parliamentary allies, the Social Democrats, to form a coalition government by Nov. 27 despite coming third in an election in October. Kyrgyzstan’s new parliament met for the first time on Nov. 10. Most of the deputies for the winning Ata Zhurt party failed to turn up.
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(News report from Issue No. 15, published on Nov. 15 2010)
NOV. 9 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenian PM Tigran Sargsyan sacked 2 deputy health ministers for corruption. Mr Sargsyan has previously said corruption is widespread in Armenia’s health, agriculture, education and finance ministries. In Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perception Index Armenia was placed 123 out of 178, just above Azerbaijan but behind Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 15, published on Nov. 15 2010)
OCT. 21 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan is still considering selling 20% of state oil company Kazmunaigas in an IPO next year, said Kairat Kelimbetov, head of Kazakh state conglomerate Samruk-Kazyna. Earlier this month he had ruled out an IPO and instead said Kazmunaigas would borrow up to $14b for its $20b investment programme.
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(News report from Issue No. 12, published on Oct. 21 2010)
OCT. 7 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — After a revolution in April, Kyrgyzstan voted in a referendum on June 27 for a new Constitution that aims to shift the balance of power from the president to Parliament. Below are the main points from the constitution that should shape Kyrgyzstan’s government following a parliamentary election on Oct. 10, 2010:
– Parliament was enlarged to 120 seats from 90 seats. Each parliament is elected for five years under proportional representation. No party can hold more than 65 seats.
– A coalition has to form a government within 15 days of an election or the president can intervene.
– Political parties are banned from being formed on ethnic or religious grounds. The election code already stated women have to make up at least 30% of parties’ candidate lists.
– Members of the military, police and judiciary are not allowed to join a political party.
– The PM has control over the budget and fiscal policy.
– The president appoints key posts such as the Prosecutor-General, the head of the Central Bank, the head of the Supreme Court and the heads of the defence and security agencies but Parliament has varying degrees of oversight.
– The president signs legislation. He or she has the right to send proposed laws back to parliament but does not have a veto.
– The president is limited to a single 6 year term.
– The Supreme Court and not the Constitutional Court will interpret the Constitution.
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(News report from Issue No. 10, published on Oct. 7 2010)
