Tag Archives: politics

“I can’t lie” says Kazakh TV reporter

DEC. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The London correspondent of Kazakhstan’s state-owned Khabar TV station and its 24.kz website, Bela Kudaibergenova, resigned saying: “I just can’t lie any more”.

On a Facebook post, Ms Kudaibergenova, who has been in London for six years, said that she decided to quit when she was ordered to spin a dowdy event organised by the Kazakh embassy as a great success which showed the love that the British people have for Kazakhstan.

“That was it. I felt that enough was enough, and I could not do it anymore,” Ms Kudaibergenova told RFE/RL in an interview.

Free speech activists have previously criticised Kazakhstan for crack- downs and for using state-run media to sugar coat reality.

After Ms Kudaibergenova’s resignation, twitter and social media lit up with messages of support.

The reaction of the official media in Kazakhstan, though, was less ecstatic. The Khabar news channel said that a planned move from London had triggered her resignation.

“We never lie,” said Arman Seitmamyut, head of of Khabar TV.

“I personally demand that all our journalists double check all their work and the accuracy of everything.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)

Kazakh Central Bank skips meeting

DEC. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Central Bank cancelled its monthly monetary policy meeting for the second consecutive month, disappointing markets which were looking for guidance on future policy. The Central Bank said that money markets were too unstable for it to announce policy. Critics said it had lost control of the tenge.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Georgia strips Saakashvili of his citizenship

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili signed a decree stripping Mikheil Saakashvili of his Georgian citizenship.

When he was in power between 2003 and 2013 Mr Saakashvili painted himself as proud Georgian patriot and it is likely that losing his Georgian citizenship will hurt and even humiliate him.

Under Georgian laws, though, dual citizenship is illegal.

In May this year, Mr Saakashvili took Ukrainian citizenship, allowing him to take up an offer by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to be governor in Odessa.

This meant that, formally, the government had to strip Mr Saakashvili of his Georgian citizenship.

“Based on the law of Georgian citizenship, President Giorgi Margvelashvili signed a decree terminating Mikheil Saakashvili’s citizenship due to his acquisition of a foreign country’s nationality,” the Georgian presidential press service said.

The AFP news agency quoted Mr Saakashvili as telling Georgia’s Rus- tavi-2 TV station that he was angry.

“They can take away my passport, but they can’t do anything with my love for my Motherland,” he said.

Although the constitution bans Georgians from taking dual nationality it doesn’t force foreigners taking Georgian citizenship to renounce their original nationality.

Georgia’s prosecutor-general also wants to arrest Mr Saakashvili and charge him with various crimes. Mr Saakashvili has always said the charges are politically motivated. Several of Mr Saakashvili’s former government colleagues and government officials have been arrested.

The European Union and the West have also warned Georgia’s government not to politicise the criminal system.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Kazakh president signs NGO law

DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev signed into law the creation of an agency under the ministry of justice that will be charged with the responsibility of approving funding to non-government agencies. The law has proved controversial with campaigners saying that it is similar to a law introduced by Russia which banned NGOs from taking funding from foreign organisations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Georgian president appoints new head of pres. admin

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili appointed Giorgi Abashishvili, his economics adviser, as head of his presidential administration. Media said Mr Abashishvili was the third head of the presidential administration since Mr Margvelashvili took office in 2013.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Tajik court sentences IRPT activist

NOV. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Tajikistan handed a 9-1⁄2 year prison sentence to an activist of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) which, until September, had been the country’s only opposition party. Hasan Rahimov had been the IRPT chief in the southern Farkhor district. He is the first of two dozen IRPT activists to stand trial on various terrorism charges. The IRPT says the charges are politically motivated.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Turkmen authorities organise choir record

NOV. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officials in Turkmenistan organised 4,166 people to sing a song written by Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, AP news agency reported, breaking a previous world record for the largest choir. The choir sung in a giant yurt.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Azerbaijani security forces arrest 19 men

DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani security forces arrested 19 people during an operation in a Baku suburb which they said was designed to root out terrorists.

Tension is running high in the suburb of Nardaran. Last week six people died, two policemen and four gang members, during a shoot-out between the security forces and a group they said had been plotting a series of attacks.

Witnesses to the operation this week said that armed police surrounded Nardaran and moved in with armoured cars. Photos also showed Nardaran residents burning tyres and stockpiling stones ahead of the police operation. There were no reports, though, of fighting.

Azerbaijan is formally a secular country although the majority of the population are Shia Muslims. Nard- aran is one of the most conservative areas in the country, a place where most women wear head scarves. Head scarves have been banned at schools in Azerbaijan but they are still a common sight in Nardaran.

Azerbaijan’s pious Shia community often turns to Iran for support and state-linked media in Tehran has been reporting on the Azerbaijani security forces’ operations in Nardaran. It described the operation as the start of another crackdown on the Shia community.

Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran have been improving over the past few years. The security force’s action in Nardaran this week and the violence last week threatens to undo some of this improvement.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Armenians prepare to vote in constitutional referendum

DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia prepared to vote in a referendum which would change the constitution to give the PM more authority in a move that opposition groups have said is designed to strengthen President Serzh Sargsyan’s grip on power.

The debate over the constitution has triggered mass public protests with an estimated 3,000 people marching through Yerevan on Dec. 1 to protest against the referendum set for Dec. 6

The demonstrators said that the proposed changes were a scam to hand Mr Sargsyan more power when he leaves the presidency at the end of his final two year term in 2018.

Mr Sargsyan and his party have said that he has no plans to become PM once he quits as president.

Instead he has argued that the current system of split responsibilities between the PM and the president could create a weakness in emergencies.

Opinion polls in the run-up to the vote said it would be close with, perhaps, those who said they would vote for the changes marginally ahead.

Georgia and Kyrgyzstan have already shifted power away from their presidents to parliament and the PM. Each said the changes were needed to modernise their political systems.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Azerbaijan’s president prepares economy for sustained downturn

NOV. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev appeared to be preparing his country for a prolonged economic slump when he ordered the government to triple the amount of debt that it could take on.

He also told the Central Bank that it had to increase the amount of capital that it holds to 500m manat ($478m) up from 10m manat.

Both orders appear to be designed to preempt a sustained economic slowdown. The increase in the amount of debt that the Azerbaijani government can accrue to 4.5b manat and the rise in the Central Bank’s working capital should soften the impact of oil prices staying low.

Like the rest of the region Azerbaijan is trying to cope with a collapse in oil prices.

The price of a barrel of oil has more than halved in the past year. For Azerbaijan, whose economy is reliant on oil sales, the impact has been heavy. It has cut its budget and dropped various infrastructure projects to save cash.

Last week a fire at an internet data centre knocked Azerbaijan off the World Wide Web, highlighting just how fragile and investment-needy some of Azerbaijan’s infrastructure it.

In June, the IMF said Azerbaijan’s economy would grow by only 1.8% this year, a sharp fall from the rapid growth of a few years ago. It also said there would be sluggish growth until 2020. Mr Aliyev’s orders appear to confirm this view.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)