Tag Archives: politics

Power struggle brews in Uzbekistan

NOV. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, has a broad ranging resume. She has been a diplomat, a pop singer, a fashion designer and a business leader.

More recently, though, she appears to have taken on the role of social activist, an unlikely part for somebody at the centre of a money laundering scheme and whose father is accused of imprisoning his enemies.

Even so, Ms Karimova, an avid Twitter user has been handing out advice on a range of topics.

In one such Tweet, Ms Karimova accused the head of the much-feared National Security Service (NSS), that’s modern Uzbekistan’s version of the Soviet-era KGB, Rustam Inoyatov, of lining himself up for the presidency.

Succession is a major issue in Uzbekistan. Islam Karimov, Ms Karimova’s father, has been president since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. He is now 75, rumoured not to be in great health and without a clear successor.

Ms Karimova would be an obvious choice, but she is loathed in Uzbekistan and various corruption scandals have tainted her reputation.

Now, perhaps, Mr Inoyatov has entered the frame. He has been head of the NSS for two decades and is one of the most powerful people in the country. Media reports said that he had prepared a dossier of Ms Karimova’s illegal financial dealings to blacken her image further.

After reading the dossier, Mr Karimov, according to local media, initiated investigations into various companies linked to his daughter, leaving her to vent.

It’s too early to say that a struggle for the presidency has started in Tashkent. What is clear, though, is that a personal power struggle between Ms Karimova and Mr Inoyatov is underway with potentially turbulent results.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)

Margvelashvili is Georgia’s new president

OCT. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Giorgi Margvelashvili, a 44-year-old academic and an ally of PM Bidzina Ivanishvili, won a presidential election in Georgia with 60% of the vote. The vote marks the departure from power of Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s leader since a revolution in 2003. European monitors said the election had been clean.

ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)

Opposition splits up in Azerbaijan

OCT. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The main opposition coalition in Azerbaijan, the National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF), is beginning to break up, underlining the fractured nature of President Ilham Aliyev’s opponents. Media reported that Lala Shevket, head of the liberal party, and her supporters stormed out of an NCDF meeting after a row.

ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)

Uzbek authorities investigate charity

OCT. 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tax police have started an investigation into the finances of The Forum of Culture and Art of Uzbekistan, a charity linked to Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, media reported. The investigation may be aimed at unsettling Ms Karimova, part of a wider power struggle in Uzbekistan.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)

Election in Georgia sparks power game

OCT. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has dominated Georgian politics for a decade, will leave office on Nov. 17. A week later his arch-foe, billionaire PM Bidzina Ivanishvili also plans to step down.

Mr Saakashvili’s replacement as president is former academic Giorgi Margvelashvili, Ivanishvili’s handpicked candidate in an Oct. 27 presidential election.

However, Mr Margvelashvili will largely be a figurehead. Under constitutional amendments that come into force on the day of his inauguration, broad powers pass to the PM.

With Mr Ivanishvili quitting as PM a year after winning a parliamentary election to begin what he says will be a campaign to strengthen civil society, Georgians are still guessing who will run the country.

Mr Ivanishvili, whose ruling Georgian Dream coalition will officially nominate the incoming PM before a vote in parliament, has said he will announce his decision later this week.

The two likeliest choices are health minister Davit Sergeenko, a doctor who previously ran the hospital in Ivanishvili’s hometown, and interior minister Irakli Garibashvili, a confidant of the PM who once headed his charity fund. Neither were widely known before they joined the cabinet.

But whoever becomes PM, Mr Ivanishvili has made it clear that he will retain a degree of control

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)

Kyrgyz parliament votes against Kumtor deal

OCT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted against a deal with Toronto-listed Centerra Gold to split ownership of the Kumtor gold mine 50-50. Instead, parliamentarians want a new agreement which gives the country a majority 67% stake in Kumtor, Kyrgyzstan’s single biggest industrial asset.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)

Ex-Azerbaijani minister released

OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) –Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev pardoned 152 prisoners, including ex-economy minister Farhad Aliyev, to mark the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, media reported. Mr Aliyev was jailed in 2005 for corruption. Some analysts interpreted his release as a softening of President Aliyev’s stance towards his opponents.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)

BBC airs Central Asia spoof

OCT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Utter the word Borat to a Kazakh diplomat and he or she may cringe.

It took years to purge the image of Kazakhstan — which wants to be seen as a modern, progressive country — from Borat, the boorish fictional character created by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for his 2006 film “Borat: Cultural learnings of America make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan”.

Now, though, it appears that the BBC has created another comedy to, potentially at least, poke more fun at the Central Asian republics.

The BBC will broadcast the first episode of its new three-part comedy on Oct. 23 called “Ambassadors”. It’s essentially a sideways, tongue-in-cheek look at the British diplomatic service and the challenges of a foreign posting in a little-known and far-away country.

The twist, for Central Asia at least, is that the fictional little-known and far-away country is called Tazbekistan. No prizes for guessing the mish-mash of republics it is based upon.

And there’s more. The pre-broadcasting blurb goes further. The plot is based around an incoming British ambassador’s attempts to get to grips with Tazbekistan’s idiosyncrasies. This includes being oil-rich and having a woeful human rights record.

(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)

Former Kazakh central banker plans move to the private sector

OCT. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Grigory Marchenko, the former chairman of the Kazakh Central Bank, told Russian media that he is considering moving into the private financial sector. Mr Marchenko also denied speculation that he was sacked from the Central Bank earlier this month. Instead, he insisted that he had quit for family reasons.

(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)

Turkmen president publishes a novel

OCT. 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — If more evidence was needed that Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is building a personality cult it has come in the form of a book. Turkmenistan’s second post-Soviet president has penned an adoring book about his 81-year-old father, media reported.

(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)