NOV. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan disbanded its energy ministry and reinvented it as a holding company under the ministry of environment. It will hold all the government’s stakes in its various energy projects. The reasons for the transformation have not been made clear.
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(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)
NOV. 3/4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev flew to Britain and France to sign a series of headline grabbing deals and pose for useful photo-ops.
In London, Mr Nazarbayev met with PM David Cameron and the Queen. The two sides signed 40 deals for £3b ($4.6b).
Importantly, Mr Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter Dariga, a deputy PM, accompanied him on the trip and was part of the official photo with the Queen. In Soviet and post-Soviet iconography, featuring in official photographs sends a strong signal and being photographed next to her father at an official engagement with the Queen will have boosted any presidential ambitions that Ms Nazarbayeva harbours.
In Paris, Mr Nazarbayev met with President Françoise Hollande and signed another set of deals worth over $5b, according to state media in Kazakhstan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Georgia handed the opposition leaning Rustavi-2 television station back to a pro-government businessman who owned it in 2004- 6, drawing accusations it was clamping down on free speech.
Two days after the ruling hundreds of people took to the streets of Tbilisi to protest against what they say is a crackdown on media freedom, ramping up tension in Georgia’s increasingly polarised society.
Under the court ruling, Kibar Kha- lvashi took back control of 60% of the shares in Rustavi-2, one of the most popular TV channels in Georgia, which he said he was pressured into selling to supporters of the then president Mikheil Saaskashvili.
“I declared at the beginning that it was my battle for justice. I want justice to be restored for everyone that suffered from Saakashvili’s regime,” media quoted Mr Khalvashi as saying. “This applies not only to Rustavi-2, but also to all other personal property that has been lost or confiscated.”
The other 40% of Rustavi2 is held by Panorama ltd. The current owners, two businessmen, have appealed the court’s decision.
The row over ownership of Rus- tavi-2 is just the latest increasingly bitter row between supporters of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition and their opponents, mainly Mr Saakashvilil’s former party — the UNM.
The Georgian Dream coalition, bankrolled by Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, won a parliamentary election in Georgian in 2012 and a presidential election in 2013. Since then public prosecutors have accused various supporters of Mr Saaskashvili of crimes when they were in power, imprisoning them or chasing them out of the country.
The US and European governments have warned the Georgian government of pursuing vendettas.
On Friday, several hundred people again gathered outside the headquarters of the TV station.
“We will not let the so-called new management enter our premises,” Rustavi2’s news anchor Zaal Udu- mashvili told the AFP news agency. “We will defend Rustavi-2 physically, using all available legal means.”
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
OCT. 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities paid a journalist working for the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty $30,000 in compensation after they admitted that police officers had beaten him in 2008. Agil Khalil was beaten by policemen when he tried to take photos in Baku.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan built a supersized glass and aluminium yurt to celebrate the city of Mary’s position as 2015 Culture and Arts Capital of the Turkic World, media reported. The yurt, which can hold up to 3,000 people, drew criticism. Central Asian governments are given to grandiose projects, projecting an image of being out-of-touch.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
OCT. 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Tajik authorities asked media to refrain from reporting on the now banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). According to officials, the IRPT had planned to overthrow the Tajik government before its leaders were arrested in September. They have said foreign media has been duped into painting them as victims of repression.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – As expected, the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan party won parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, securing President Ilham Aliyev’s control over the legislative assembly.
Azerbaijan’s Central Election Committee said that Yeni Azerbaijan had won 69 seats in the 125-seat parliament, slightly lower than five years ago. Independent MPs, who are in reality loyal to Mr Aliyev, won most of the other seats, giving him near total control.
Mr Aliyev said that the result reflected the will of Azerbaijan’s people and gave him a mandate for change.
“The factors, hindering the development of the country, as well as corruption cases should be eliminated. There is a strong political will and public support for achieving it,” he told media after the election.
The West had criticised Azerbaijan for cracking down on civil liberties and in the run-up to the election its main vote monitoring watchdog, the OSCE’s ODHIR, pulled out of covering the election after a row with the Azerbaijani authorities over the number of monitors it was allowed.
Tension has grown this year between the West and Azerbaijan. After the election result the US said: “We continue to have concerns about the restrictive political environment in Azerbaijan and urge the Government of Azerbaijan to respect the freedoms of peaceful assembly, association, and independent voices including the media.”
Russia, by contrast, praised the election as free and fair. European vote monitors have never said an election in Azerbaijan was free or fair.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Corruption is still rife in Uzbekistan despite the introduction of the country’s first anti-corruption plan earlier this year and a so called anti-corruption coordination commission, the OECD said in a new report.
In its report, the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said that Uzbekistan needs to criminalise corruption and promote public sector honesty and integrity.
Corruption and bribery are considered deeply embedded in Uzbekistan. The OECD, an intergovernmental organisation, report is evidence that little has changed despite some headline policies.
In effect, the OECD, said that Uzbekistan’s new laws were window dressing.
In its exhaustive 116 page report, the OECD said that Uzbekistan needed to focus on a handful of key policies if it was committed to beating corruption.
These involved conducting anti- corruption surveys regularly and publishing the results; improving the independence and integrity of the law enforcement agencies; developing e- government tools.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh Senate passed a bill that will regulate financing for NGOs, a move criticised by the West as cutting back on civil liberties. The new bill is similar to a law passed in Russia and limits NGOs’ access to funding from overseas.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament reappointed Temir Sariyev as the country’s PM, one month after an election won by President Almazbek Atamabayev’s Social Democrats. Mr Sariyev will head the coalition government. He has been PM since May 2015.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
