FEB. 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov sacked deputy PM Palvan Taganov for “weakening discipline and order”. The official explanation is code for corruption allegations. Mr Taganov had served in his post for two years and also headed the official commodity exchange. According to unconfirmed reports, Mr Taganov has been arrested.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 267, published on Feb. 12 2016)
FEB. 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered his government to spend more than 360b tenge ($1b) building houses and supporting small and medium-sized businesses, a policy he hopes will both stimulate Kazakhstan’s flatlining economy and cement support for his Nur Otan party ahead of parliamentary elections next month.
His plan also involves trying to protect both Kazakhstan’s $4b national pension pot by diversifying investments into other currencies and second tier banks by buying up their bonds, a form of financial aid.
With more data showing that low oil prices and a devalued currency have dragged down Kazakhstan’s economy, Mr Nazarbayev appears to have decided that now is the moment to be bold.
“Many countries have found themselves in a difficult situation and are forced to cut social spending, suspend projects, resulting in rising unemployment. Yet we continue building industrial facilities and open new markets,” he told a government meeting. “At the centre of all my orders are the needs of the common man, his well-being and stability.”
Three government financial insti- tutions — the Baiterek Holding company, the House Building Bank of Kazakhstan and the Samruk Kazyna sovereign wealth fund — will admin- ister funds for the house building spending spree, official media reported. The $1b will come from pushing cash earmarked for a social spending in 2017 forward by a year.
Mr Nazarbayev likes to act the father figure, looking after the Kazakh people during times of hardship. This showed through with his emphasis on looking after the common man. He said that his spending plans would create 18,000 jobs, build 42 new schools and extend and improve the electric grid system.
“Full and effective utilisation of funds allocated for the implementation of these measures will stimulate economic activity, support employment and add 1% into economic growth in 2016,” he said.
If Mr Nazarbayev needed a reminder of the battle he faces to turn around the economy, it came from the Central Bank. It said the country’s deficit measured $5.3b in 2015, a result of the currency depreciation. The tenge halved in value in 2015.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 267, published on Feb. 12 2016)
JAN 29 2016, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — At a televised conference for his Nur Otan political party, a stony faced Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev played down a 50% drop in the value of the tenge currency and told viewers to look at the economic positives.
Mr Nazarbayev likes to act the elder father figure during times of economic and political strife in Kazakhstan and with oil prices at a 12- year-low, government spending being cut and inflation rising, Mr Nazarbayev clearly thought it was time to calm the increasingly jittering nerves of his countrymen.
“We have been living with $30 per barrel oil for half a year now and nothing has happened. We will overcome (this) and maybe we should get used to this, I think it has come here to stay,” he told the 2,000 assembled delegates.
Kazakh officials know that they are treading a thin line and are eager to head off any sign of discontent.
In Azerbaijan, unease at the economic malaise triggered several clashes between protesters and police in regional towns last month but in Kazakhstan, the authorities have been able to dampen public frustration.
Judging the public mood — when to be firm and when to be conciliatory — is a key skill during this time of economic hardship and one that Mr Nazarbayev has previously shown that he is adept at.
Last month, Mr Nazarbayev called a parliamentary election for March, 18 months early. Analysts said that this had been arranged so that Mr Nazarbayev and his officials could hold an election now, before the economic situation worsened further.
At the Nur Otan conference, though, Mr Nazarbayev avoided mention of the election and instead told Kazakhs that the government was working hard to look after them.
“We support our working population through implementation of the Employment Roadmap-2020 Program. There is no place for unemployment in Kazakhstan. We have all resources in place to avoid it,” he said.
Official unemployment figures in Kazakhstan are considered unreliable. Correspondents in Kazakhstan, though, and reports from various regional towns suggest that people are losing their jobs.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili attended President Giorgi Margvelashvili’s annual state-of-the-nation address to parliament, a sign that relations between the president’s office and the PM’s office are improving. Mr Kvirikashvili’s predecessor, Irakli Garibashvili, had snubbed the speech for the past two years. Mr Kvirikashvili was installed as Georgia’s PM at the end of last year by Bidzina Ivanishvili, the richest and most powerful man in Georgia. Mr Garibashvili had lost popularity and his public rows with Mr Margvelashvili had become a distraction in the build up to what is likely to be a tough fought election at the end of this year.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
JAN. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s first post-Soviet president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, had treatment for cancer in a hospital in California, media reported. It had been reported earlier in January that Mr Ter-Petrosyan, 71, had flown to the US for emergency treatment. He had been president from 1991-1998. He was a divisive figure who in 2008, was accused of whipping up anti-government protests that triggered clashes with security forces. At least 16 people died in the clashes when police opened fire on the protesters.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 1 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon ordered Parliament to rename a number of cities, regions and a reservoir to give them more of a Tajik flavour.
Since becoming an independent state in 1991, the Tajik government has been keen to build up a back-story for the country. It replaced most of the Russian place names with names mostly derived from the Samanid Empire (819-919), a common tactic in Central Asia which had not been independent countries before 1991.
In 2007 Rakhmon also dropped the Russian suffix ‘ov’ from his name.
His press office said: “The renaming of districts and cities promotes national values and a sense of dignity. It is especially important to educate younger generations about the rich culture of the ancestors of the modern statehood of Tajik people.”
But not everybody thinks it is such a good idea.
Dushanbe taxi driver Odilbek, 38, said it was a waste of money. “These people do not understand what they are doing,” he said. “We have more serious problems and this is a waste of money. People will call the cities by their old names anyway.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
JAN. 29 2016, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — Nur Otan, the political party of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, has packed its list of candidates for next month’s parliamentary election with sportsmen, singers and other household names — reflecting both its status as the establishment party and also its drive to boost its popular appeal.
Candidates for the 127-seat lower house of parliament include champion boxer Gennady Golovkin, Olympic weighlifting gold medal winner Ilya Ilin, and pop stars Zhanar Dugalova and Kairat Nurtas as well as Dariga Nazarbayeva, Mr Nazarbayev’s daughter, and the ex- mayor of Almaty Akhmetzhan Yesimov.
Kazakh political analyst, Adil Nurmakov, said that although Nur Otan had used this strategy previously, they were employing it particularly heavily for this election.
“It is an attempt by the ruling party to position itself as a popular force among celebrities truly loved by the people. I see it as a primitive electoral technique. It has been used numerous times in the past,” he said.
Last month, Mr Nazarbayev called a parliamentary election for March 20, a year earlier than it had been scheduled for, officially because the current parliament had fulfilled its remit.
Analysts, though, said it was called early to head off civil strife as the economic climate worsens. On the streets of Almaty, reaction to the celebratory packed party list was mixed.
“Sportsmen are also people. If the Parliament has sportsmen there will be more discipline,” said Maksat, a sales distributor.
Others were less impressed.
“A deputy should be a person with special education not just a regular boxer or a singer,” said Zinaida Trinojenko, a PR specialist. “It is a delusion.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukahmedov wants to tinker with Turkmenistan’s constitution to strengthen its commitment to neutrality, official media reported. Last month, in a similar move, Mr Berdymukhamedov approved a new military doctrine which reasserted Turkmenistan’s neutrality. Turkmenistan’s neutrality has been challenged by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) -Tajikistan’s Constitutional Court approved changes to the country’s constitution that removed a limit on the number of times that a person can be president. The amendments will mean that Pres. Emomali Rakhmon is now eligible to run for president again at the next election in 2020. He has been in power since the mid-1990s. Tajik lawmakers are also looking into changing the constitution to allow people under the age of 35 to run for president. This would allow Mr Rakhmon’s son to stand in 2020. Analysts have said that Mr Rakhmon is hedging his bets before he decides if he wants to run or not.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
FEB. 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – National identity for the countries of Central Asia is still a major issue, far more so than for their neighbours in the South Caucasus.
When independence was thrust on the five Central Asian states in 1991, the leaders of these newly created countries had to build a sense of nation- hood from scratch.
And so they turned to their history books. They dug up some famous names from the past and wrote them up as national heroes and icons.
For Tajikistan, the most significant national hero was Ismail Somoni, the founder of the Samanid dynasty. Tajik officials have pinned their national story, the narrative that they use to give people a sense of nationhood, around the Samanid dynasty. A statue of Somoni dominates central Dushanbe and the national airline and currency are all named after him, as are a host of other institutions and buildings.
Branding is important, even for a country, and Pres. Emomali Rakhmon is probably right to pursue it. He has to make sure, though, that branding doesn’t distract from governing.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(Editorial from Issue No. 266, published on Feb. 5 2016)
