MARCH 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The ruling Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan won three of the six major cities that held local elections, cementing its authority other regional cities that had previously been considered staunchly pro-opposition. The SDPK won in Osh, Tokmok and Kemin, three important regional cities in Kyrgyzstan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 28 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — The tops floors of the most prominent department store in Tajkiistan’s capital, the Soviet-era TSUM, are eerily quiet.
Most of the traders who sold mobile phones, clothes and Tajik national mementos to foreign tourists have quit their leases. They said the Presidential Administration took over the company that owned the store earlier this year and has forced up rent.
Aziz, a 26-year-old man who sold Tajik-themed gifts, told The Conway Bulletin’s Dushanbe correspondent that rent used to be around $7 per square metre.
“Now they want us to pay more than $20 per square meter,” Aziz said, the anger clearly audible in his voice.
He shook his head, more to himself than to anybody else, and continued to pack up his products into boxes scattered across the floor. Like most of the other small traders he was quitting TSUM.
“I am moving out because I cannot pay the rent. Trade is not good in TSUM, not so many people come nowadays,” he said.
Traders said that a month ago, President Emomali Rakhmon’s Executive Office, which is headed by his daughter Ozoda Rakhmon, took control of the company that ran TSUM. The Investment and State Property Control Committee said that TSUM was privatised illegally in the 1990s. Officially, TSUM has now been re-nationalised although critics of Mr Rakhmon have said that it is now effectively under the control of his family.
Built in 1960’s, TSUM is one of the few remaining Soviet-built buildings in Dushanbe and had been one of the most popular trading centres. But Tajikistan is hurting from a sharp economic downturn. The Bulletin’s correspondent said that while bigger shops selling various Western brands were still operating on the ground floor of TSUM, the first and second floors were almost entirely empty.
Mr Rakhmon’s Presidential Administration has not commented on allegations that it has inflated rent at TSUM but the accusations will bolster critics who accuse the president of corruption.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 29/30 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Around 250 delegates from Kyrgyzstan’s civil society gathered in the conference centre of a Bishkek hotel to discuss, argue and chew over just how they can play a more prominent role in holding the authorities to account and influencing the country’s development.
Organisers have hailed the meeting as groundbreaking for Central Asia which since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 has been driven by top-down decision-making. Civil society is able to influence events at a very local level in Kyrgyzstan but higher up, except perhaps through the ballot box and through revolutions, little is possible.
Rita Karasartova, Director of the Institute of Social Analysis, and one of the organisers of the forum dubbed ‘I Care’, said that the movement had taken momentum and inspiration from a conference organised last year to discuss potential changes to the Kyrgyz constitution.
“We were concerned about possible big risks of this proposal, and we wanted to speak up about them in front of the Government on the central square,” she told a Conway Bulletin correspondent. “Despite some parliamentary factions accusing us of preparing coup d’état, our protests were fruitful because the President cancelled the proposed constitutional changes.”
At the ‘I Care’ meeting judicial reforms, MPs pay and the failure of governments to deliver on election promises were hot topics — a reflection of how free Kyrgyzstan’s society is compared to the rest of the region.
Some, though, were sceptical of the reasons for the conference.
Anastasia, 23, a student in Bishkek, said: “Such forums do not happen just by themselves. There must be foreign supporters that promote them to have such activities.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – ALMATY — The results of the parliamentary elections may have been expected but there was a surprise lined up. A few days days after the vote the Nur Otan party dropped Dariga Nazarbayeva, eldest daughter of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, from its list of MPs (March 24).
The Conway Bulletin’s Central Asia newswire service (the Silk Road Intelligencer) broke the news on Thursday that Ms Nazarbayeva’s had been dropped by Nur Otan as an MP.
MP in 2012-14 and also held the post of deputy PM since last September, was in line to return to the lower house of Parliament and be nominated as speaker.
This would have granted her a powerful and respected position and also signalled that she was being lined up as a potential successor for her 75-year-old father as Kazakhstan’s second post-Soviet president.
There has been no explanation to the apparent change of plan but it set off various theories on the Kazakh presidential succession issue.
And last week, too, Ms Nazarbayeva’s son, 31-year-old Nurali Aliyev, quit as deputy mayor of Astana apparently to pursue business interests.
This effectively means that in one week, two key members of the president’s family have taken a step back from influential political positions.
One theory previously been put forward for Kazakhstan’s succession issue was that Ms Nazarbayeva would take over in the short term as president before making way for her son. That now appears off the agenda.
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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)
MARCH 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Observers expected one major outcome from Kazakhstan’s parliamentary election. Dariga Nazarbayeva’s nomination as an MP and her ascendency to be parliament’s Speaker, an important constitutional role and a stepping stone to higher office. But it didn’t come through.
Has she fallen out with her father, the 75-year-old Pres. Nursultan Nazarbayev? Her son, Nurali Aliyev, resigned as deputy mayor of Astana earlier this month. Coincidences are rare in Kazakh politics.
Is she adopting a more low-key approach? This could be one way of dodging future tough austerity policies that the government will inevitably adopt to survive a worsening economic crisis.
Whatever the greater game plan is, one thing is for sure. Kazakhstan’s succession issue will once again dominate Kazakh politics.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)
MARCH 20/21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – ALMATY — Kazakhstan’s ruling Nur Otan party won a parliamentary election with 82% of the vote, although Western monitors said that the vote was not fair.
The result is a near mirror image of a parliamentary election in 2012. Nur Otan scored 81% of the vote four years ago and the quasi-opposition parties Ak Zhol and the People’s Communist Party, which are both pro-President Nazarbayev, polled 7% in 2012 and 2016.
European vote monitors said that the election was broadly unfair although, importantly there had been some progress on previous elections.
Marietta Tidei, the head of the OSCE’s monitoring mission for the Kazakh election, said that Kazakhstan still had some way to go to meet what Europe would consider to be a free and democratic election.
“The ruling party had a clear advantage over others in these elections and, while the parties were generally able to campaign freely, genuine political choice remains insufficient,” she said.
Europe’s main vote monitoring watchdog, the OSCE’s ODHIR, has never judged an election in Kazakhstan to be free and fair.
For the Kazakh authorities, though, the election was important as it imposes more stability on the country just as the economy appears to worsen.
Still, a Conway Bulletin correspondent in Almaty said it was difficult finding people who voted for Nur Otan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s party. Turn out in Almaty was only 34%, the lowest in the country.
Nurbek didn’t vote. His comments on why he didn’t think it was worth voting in the election were broadly representative.
“I don’t think there is any point in voting because my vote is not really going to change anything,” he said.
“Elections are just a play to pretend we have some sort of democracy which we obviously don’t.”
Still, somedid vote and they chose Nur Otan.
“We voted for Nur Otan. There were many parties but with Nur Otan our future is certain,” said a couple who declined to be named as they strolled through Almaty.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)
MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Government ministries in Kazakhstan have banned smart phones from buildings to try and stop official documents being leaked. The ban, apparently, was to try and stop officials from photographing documents with their smart phone and then sending them on to people using WhatsApp. Kazakhstan has launched a number of drives over the past few years to try and professionalise its civil service.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)
MARCH 11/14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI — Georgian government officials and opposition MPs appear to have been the target of a blackmail plot after a series of sex tapes were posted online.
Videos of two Georgian women MPs and two men from the ruling Georgian Dream coalition, apparently having extramarital sex, were uploaded to Youtube.
The videos were taken down quickly but not before news of their existence had gone viral. Georgia’s conservative society was both outraged by the videos of the officials having sex and also at the breach of privacy.
Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili said the security agencies had detained five people in connection with the plot.
“All the law enforcement agencies are involved in the investigation, we need to put an end to terrorising the society with such videos once and for all,” he said.
News reports said the originators of the videos contacted their targets before uploading the videos, demanding that they resign from their posts.
For Georgians the emergence of the videos is a reminder of the old- school Soviet- style pressure techniques which they thought they had left behind.
It’s unclear if the blackmail plot is linked to a parliamentary election planned for later this year.
Privacy, surveillance, and blackmail are all hot issues with the upcoming elections next October. The current government campaigned strongly against surveillance of citizens and politicians before they came to power in 2012.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Hundreds of students at Tbilisi State University staged a sit-in to protest at what they said was the non transparent way the university decides on its management structure. The protest attracted nationwide attention, and even forced the intervention of PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili. Some analysts said that the protest could spread.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 14 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s President Almazbek Atambayev fired Nursulu Akhmetova, one of the most prominent women in Kyrgyz finance, as head of the Kyrgyz-Russian Development Fund barely a year after she took the job.
The $500m Kyrgyz-Russian Development Fund was set up last February to smooth Kyrgyzstan’s entry into the Eurasian Economic Union.
It was supposed to hand out grants and cheap loans to businesses to help them make the transition. Instead, in the seven months since Kyrgyzstan became a Eurasian Economic Union member, the Kyrgyz- Russian Fund has become a source for frustration for Kyrgyz businesses.
News reports quoted Mr Atambayev saying at her sacking: “I’ve spoken about this a few times with the Prime Minister. The Fund has not developed well, and the Government did not make it to work well.”
Kyrgyz businesses have accused the fund of changing the rules and making cash available only to large companies rather than small businesses.
Under Ms Akhmetova, the Fund had insisted that to qualify for loans or grants, businesses had to take out a minimum loan of $3m, contributing 20% itself.
For Mr Atambayev, the sacking is a personal disappointment. Before getting the job, on a three year contract, Ms Akhmetova had been head of the analytical department of the Presidential Administration. She was also its deputy director. Mr Atambayev would have worked with Ms Akhemetova personally.
Her replacement was named as Kubanychbek Kulmatov, a former mayor of Bishkek.
Analyst Emil Juraev said that the Fund still had a role to play if it can regain credibility under new leadership.
“The Russian-Kyrgyz Development Fund, if used well, can certainly have a significant positive effect on economic development of Kyrgyzstan,” he said. “However, so far there have been many reasons for concern about the ability of Kyrgyzstan to effectively and freely manage the funds.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
