JAN. 5 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan plans to name a mountain after Russian PM Vladimir Putin. The chosen mountain will be over 4,500m high and located in the Tian Shan range on the border with China near Mount Boris Yeltsin and Mount Lenin. In December 2010, Russia pledged $200m in aid to Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 22, published on Jan. 11 2011)
JAN. 7 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev turned down calls for a referendum to ditch presidential elections in 2012 and 2017. Parliament had backed a public petition to hold a referendum to extend Mr Nazarbayev’s rule unchecked until 2020. The US had criticised the move to scrap elections as a setback for democracy.
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(News report from Issue No. 22, published on Jan. 11 2011)
JAN. 8 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s security services detained the head of a banned Islamic group for inciting disorder and calling for a Jihad, media reported. Earlier in January, Mohsun Samedov, leader of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, had posted a speech on the internet criticising a ban on headscarves and calling for the government to quit.
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(News report from Issue No. 22, published on Jan. 11 2011)
DEC. 26 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – This year Kazakhs could be asked to vote in their second referendum since independence in 1991.
The first referendum in 1995 asked Kazakhs to bypass the Constitution and extend Nursultan Nazarbayev’s term as president. Nearly 16 years later, a potential second referendum will ask Kazakhs to bypass the Constitution again and extend Mr Nazarbayev’s term as president.
The Constitution states a presidential election should be held every five years and the next one had been planned for 2012. Now, Parliament and the Kazakh people say they want Mr Nazarbayev to reign uninterrupted until 2020.
Opponents of Mr Nazarbayev say this highlights his autocratic ways. His supporters say the people and not Mr Nazarbayev is driving the referendum.
It is no surprise that the 70-year-old Mr Nazarbayev wants to run Kazakhstan for the next decade. His aides hinted throughout 2010 he wanted to remain in power, in June Parliament made him Leader of the Nation and his succession policy clearly still needs finalising. In 2007, Parliament also changed Kazakhstan’s Constitution to allow Mr Nazarbayev, and only Mr Nazarbayev, to run for an unlimited number of terms as president.
But scrapping presidential elections (even through a referendum) is a significant step, especially as Kazakhstan ended 2010 as chairman of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) — Europe’s human rights and democracy watchdog.
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(News report from Issue No. 21, published on Jan. 4 2011)
DEC. 29 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Parliament voted to back a referendum to scrap the next two presidential elections and allow President Nursultan Nazarbayev to stay in power until 2020. Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported the referendum may be held in March.
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(News report from Issue No. 21, published on Jan. 4 2011)
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)
SEPT. 12 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Cables from WikiLeaks show how US diplomats detailed the rise of Uzbek President Islam Karimov’s eldest daughter Gulnara, who they described as “the single most hated person in the country”. From Dushanbe, cables described how the US competed with Russia for influence
and how in 2006 US diplomats drunk the Tajik defence minister “well under the table”.
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(News report from Issue No. 19, published on Dec. 13 2010)
DEC. 1 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) —Kazakhstan hosted the first summit of the 56-member Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) since 1999. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev basked in the limelight but delegates failed to agree a consensus to give the organisation the impetus which its critics say it needs.
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(News report from Issue No. 18, published on Dec. 6 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)
