AUG. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to burnish his democratic credentials, Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov resigned as the head of the ruling Democratic Party. Turkmenistan holds a parliamentary election in December and Mr Berdymukhamedov said he didn’t want to influence it. In reality both parties competing in the election are pro-presidential.
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(News report from Issue No. 148, published on Aug. 19 2013)
AUG. 14 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — After taking over as Turkmenistan’s president in 2007, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov dismantled the personality cult established by his predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov. Now, though, he appears to be building his own. Media reported that the authorities in Ashgabat have erected a 5m-high statue of Mr Berdymukhamedov’s father, a former interior ministry official.
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(News report from Issue No. 148, published on Aug. 19 2013)
AUG. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — An estimated 3,000 supporters of Azerbaijan’s opposition parties held a rare sanctioned rally on the outskirts of Baku. They waved placards and called for a fair presidential election in October. The mayor’s office only sanctioned the rally for the outskirts of Baku.
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(News report from Issue No. 148, published on Aug. 19 2013)
AUG. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged France not to extradite former Kazakh banker Mukhtar Ablyazov to Kazakhstan where he is wanted on various charges including stealing billions of dollars and plotting a series of bomb attacks. HRW said Ablyazov was at risk of ill-treatment. French police arrested Ablyazov earlier this month.
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(News report from Issue No. 147, published on Aug. 12 2013)
AUG. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In an interview with the FT, Umirzak Shukeyev, chairman of Kazakhstan’s $80b sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna, said he wanted to streamline the organisation and improve corporate governance standards. Over the past few years, Kazakh companies have attracted increased criticism on governance issues.
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(News report from Issue No. 147, published on Aug. 12 2013)
AUG. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen officials have pulled the quasi-religious book written by former President Saparmurat Niyazov from the national curriculum, media reported. The autocratic Niyazov ruled Turkmenistan from independence in 1991 until he died in 2006. He wrote Rukhnama in 2001 and insisted that school children studied it.
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(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)
AUG. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Tbilisi acquitted Bacho Akhalaia, Georgia’s former interior minister and an ally of President Mikheil Saakashvili, of abusing his office. Mr Akhalaia still faces two other charges, including instigating a prison mutiny, in one of the most politically sensitive trials in Georgia in recent years.
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(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)
AUG. 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — So, in the end, he hadn’t gotten very far. After nearly 18 months, police found the 50-year-old Mukhtar Ablyazov hiding in a luxury villa near Cannes on France’s sun drenched southern coast.
Kazakh prosecutors want to charge Ablyazov with trying to overthrow President Nursultan Nazarbayev and planning a series of bomb attacks in Almaty. He had moved to London to escape the Kazakh authorities but has been on the run since fleeing a court that convicted him of perjury. That was back in February 2012 during Ablyazov’s protracted case with BTA Bank, the Kazakh bank he used to be chair, which had accused him of embezzling billions.
Now Kazakhstan needs to work out how to get Ablyazov back to face prosecutors.
The problem for Mr Nazarbayev is that France can’t extradite him directly because Kazakhstan is not a member of the Council of Europe’s Extradition Convention.
This could have been a problem except, conveniently, Ukraine, which is a member of the extradition convention, has issued an extradition request for Ablayzov to face fraud charges. From Kiev, Ablyazov could then be sent on to Kazakhstan.
It promises to be a protracted extradition battle with human rights groups already warning the French government that Ablyazov is unlikely to get a fair hearing.
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(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)
AUG. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A pre-election spending spree on various social projects will push Azerbaijan into a budget deficit for the first time in a decade, Bloomberg quoted the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s as saying. Azerbaijan’s presidential election is scheduled for October. Ilham Aliyev is running for a third consecutive term.
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(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)
ASTANA, JULY 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — With typical panache, the Kazakh capital marked its 15th birthday on July 6. By no coincidence Astana Day, as the public holiday is called, is also the birthday of the long-serving president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Astana is Mr Nazarbayev’s pet project. He moved the capital from Almaty, in the lush foothills of the Tien Shan mountains to the barren northern steppes in 1997.
On Astana Day, the reflection of skyscrapers made of steel and glass shimmered in the waters of the Yesil River. Crowds gathered around the Pyramid of Peace, designed by British architect Norman Foster, and the Kazakh Country column symbolising Kazakhstan’s sovereignty. A sculpture of Mr Nazarbayev is embedded into the column’s plinth.
For his critics this sort of architectural eulogy proves Mr Nazarbayev is fostering a cult of personality.
This year, a festival of Kazakh nomadic culture took place outside the Khan Shatyr shopping mall, whose swooping design resembles the regal tent of the nomadic rulers of old.
One poet sang of a time when Astana celebrated its 1,500th anniversary. By then Mr Nazarbayev will be long gone but probably not forgotten. Most Kazakhs believe Astana, which means capital, is destined one day to bear a more evocative name — that of Mr Nazarbayev himself.
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(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)
