Tag Archives: politics

Turkmen President pardons prisoners

MAY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov pardoned 853 prisoners to mark the Day of the Constitution. The presidential grace is a routine gesture that shows Mr Berdymukhamedov’s control over the essential institutions in the country. According to official media, around 4,000 people have been freed in the past year through presidential pardons.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Georgia changes rules for Constitutional Court

MAY 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Opposition MPs in Georgia have protested against what they said was a rushed reform of the Constitutional Court that will curtail its power and subvert it to the government.

The ruling Georgian Dream coalition set the final vote on the bill for Saturday May 14, just 14 hours after it had sparked furious arguments in parliament.

The opposition, led by the United National Movement party (UNM), the party of former President Mikheil Saakashvili, said the bill was in effect a punishment against the Constitutional Court for ruling against the Georgian Dream several times in the past few months.

Shalva Shavgulidze, opposition MP for the Free Democrats, said: “The only purpose of this bill is for the ruling party to gain control over the Constitutional Court.”

These charges were rejected by MPs from the Georgian Dream. MP Eka Beselia said that the changes were needed to reduce the previous UNM government’s influence over it. “This Court has to be fully liberated from political influences,” she said.

The bill, now adopted, raised the quorum for the 9-member Court from five to six, effectively making it more difficult for the Court to veto laws supported by the government.

Democracy lobby groups have said that this will make the Court a less effective check on the government’s executive powers.

Under the new law the minimum numbers of judges needed to make a decision was also raised to seven from six, again making it more complicated to pass judgements.

In September, just a few weeks before what will be a fiercely fought parliamentary election, President Giorgi Margvelashvili, will appoint new judges to the Court after two of the sitting judges reach the end of their 10-year terms.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Is Tajikistan preparing to unleash its Nashi?

MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — So, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the authorities in Tajikistan are using students to promote their causes.

Excellent reporting from our ‘Man in Dushanbe’ has exposed this practice. He has spoken to several students who have said their universities and teachers have forced them to either march in favour of government policies or demonstrate outside the embassies of countries which have irritated President Emomali Rakhmon by giving his enemies sanctuary.

This is a well-worn strategy in the former Soviet Union. When I was a correspondent in Moscow between 2006-9 I reported heavily on the growth of a youth group called Nashi and its various offshoots. Nashi was effectively a massive mobilisation of Russian youth, often whipped up into a frenzy to support various policies promoted by Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev, who was the Russian President at the time.

Their summer camps, set up in the dense forests of northern Russia, were an eye-opener. Pictures of opposition activists dressed up as prostitutes were placed around the site. In Moscow, Nashi rallies were rowdy affairs, nationalistic and with a violent undercurrent.

The movement in Tajikistan hasn’t reached these proportions yet and is less sophisticated but the authorities are still unleashing, while trying to control, the same forces.

It’s a crude, dangerous technique.

BANKING ISSUES

Sticking with Tajikistan, news that the country’s second largest bank has been placed under administration doesn’t come as a surprise. TSB has been listing heavily for a while. The strains on the Tajik economy have just become too great and it was only a matter of time before something gave. The important issue to monitor now is whether this is contagious and other Tajik banks also cave in.

It’s also important to keep the banking failure in context. The Tajik banking system may be weaker than its neighbours but all the Central Asian economies have been under the same pressures. Remittances from Russia have dried up, currencies have halved in value and GDP growth rates are being revised down. These banks were giving out soft loans for years and many of these will have turned bad.

If a bank in Tajikistan effectively says it doesn’t have any more money left, could banks in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan be experiencing the same problem?

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Turkmen President dishes out reprimands

MAY 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov rounded up and publicly shamed several government officials, in another televised show of strength. Most notably, Mr Berdymukhamedov targeted the minister of public utilities and the vice-minister of transport. Myratniyaz Abilov, mayor of Ashgabat, received his second reprimand in three months. Mr Berdymukhamedov said he is unhappy with the progress of construction work on the upcoming Asian Indoor Games. Mr Berdymukhamedov generally dishes out reprimands when Turkmenistan’s economy has tightened.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Germany to vote on Armenian genocide

MAY 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – German lawmakers scheduled for June a vote on whether to label the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 as a “genocide”, a move that will score a major victory for Armenian lobby groups. In a 2005 resolution, the German parliament fell short of calling the deaths a genocide. France, Italy and a handful of other European countries recognise the 1915 events as a genocide, which irritates Turkey.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Kyrgyz President reshuffles government

MAY 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev appointed Abdikarim Alimbayev as the new chairman of the State Border Service. His predecessor, Raimberdi Duyshenbiyev, was appointed Chief of Staff. The Border Service is an important office in Kyrgyzstan. Unresolved border disputes with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have triggered clashes in the past months.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Kazakh police arrest activists

ALMATY, MAY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s police detained several activists ahead of a planned demonstration against reforms to the land code in an attempt to stifle opposition forces which have been attracting support in the country’s main centres.

Police detained various activists on May 17 and 18, when courts in Atyrau, Almaty, Uralsk and Astana ordered the arrest of several people on charges of participating or planning unsanctioned public meetings.

Courts ordered pre-trial detention sentences for three to 15 days.

Max Bokayev, an activist from Atyrau, and Bakhytzhan Toregozhina, director of human rights NGO Ar.Rukh.Khak. in Almaty were among the most prominent figures to be detained.

Amendments to the land code, approved in November 2015, have been at the heart of protests that sparked in Atyrau in mid-April and spread throughout Kazakhstan over the weeks that followed.

The protests have now taken on a more general anti-government agenda.

People in Kazakhstan are increasingly frustrated with the drop in economic conditions. Jobs are being cut, inflation is rising.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Pen portrait: Dariga Nazarbayeva

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – From part-time opera singer, to the ex-wife of one of her father’s most hated enemies, Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has led a life in the public eye.

She is now a deputy PM and had been an MP until quietly dropping off the Nur Otan party list, that’s her father’s party, at an election in March. But Ms Nazarbayeva, who turned 53-years-old on May 7, is never far from the headlines and this week she was revealed to have been the part- owner of a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. It is unclear what the company ever did or owned.

Although other public figures may be tarnished with such an association, Ms Nazarbayeva will no doubt be able to see out any fall out. Afterall, she has fallen from favour before and bounced back to be considered a potential next president of Kazakhstan.

Ms Nazarbayeva was married to Rakhat Aliyev, the one-time favourite of President Nazarbayev. Together they controlled some of Kazakhstan’s biggest industries before Aliyev rowed with his father-in-law in 2007.

He fled into exile, accused of murder and set himself up in Europe as an opponent. Ms Nazarbayeva, by contrast, stayed in Kazakhstan and slowly mended her relationship with her father. She disowned all links to her former husband and instead concentrated on building up her father’s trust. This seems to have paid off. Ms Nazarbayeva re-entered parliament as an MP at the parliamentary election in 2012 and was made a deputy PM last year.

More than a handful of analysts have now said that with no other clear contenders, Mr Nazarbayev could be grooming his eldest daughter to take over from him. She quit as an MP at the 2016 election, potentially making it easier for her to take the top job. It wouldn’t have been possible to be president and an MP.

Her father also now ensures that her profile is maintained by starring next to him at major events and speeches.

As for the opera singing, Ms Nazarbayeva is regarded as a decent amateur, even giving a concert at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, as well as appearing on Kazakh TV.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kyrgyz police arrest alleged coup organisers

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Bishkek arrested three leaders of the opposition People’s Parliament group for planning what they said was a coup. Sources at law enforcement agencies said that police had arrested leader Bekbolot Talgarbekov and his associates Torobai Kolubayev and Marat Sultanov. Talgarbekov had been a senior government official under Kyrgyzstan’s first post Soviet president, Askar Akayev. Kyrgyzstan has suffered two violent revolutions since independence in 1991.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

UN condemns clampdown in Kazakhstan

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned what it said was the Kazakh authorities crackdown on protests against proposed amendments to the land code. “The government must immediately end all forms of persecution and take effective measures to protect civil society,” it said. The protests forced Pres. Nursultan Nazarbayev to delay planned changes to the land code. Mobile recordings of the protests showed police clashing with demonstrators.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)