OCT. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s exiled former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev published an autobiography of his time in office, a move that will irritate the Kyrgyz leadership. Mr Bakiyev presented his book in Belarus, where he fled after a revolution in 2010. Kyrgyzstan has tried unsuccessfully to extradite Mr Bakiyev to face various corruption charges.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili accused the opposition UNM of being a criminal gang that didn’t deserve to exist after videos of security officers abusing prisoners during the UNM’s time in office were leaked. The West has accused Mr Garibashvili and the Georgian Dream coalition of pursuing a witch-hunt against the UNM.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 20 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Triggering a furious reaction from Tbilisi, the Georgian rebel region of South Ossetia said that it planned to hold a referendum on whether to join Russia.
South Ossetian leader Leonid Tibilov made the announcement after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, a vote that commentators said would mimic a similar vote in Crimea last year which preceded Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian region.
“The referendum, the positive outcome of which I have no doubt, will allow us to unite our people,” media quoted Mr Tibilov as saying after meeting Vladislav Surkov, an adviser to Mr Putin.
He didn’t put a timeframe on the vote but did say that it would only go ahead with the express permission from Moscow.
And this appeared to have disappeared very quickly. The following day, the Kremlin released a statement which said that a referendum on South Ossetia joining Russia had not even been discussed at the meeting.
Georgia fought a war in 2008 against Russia over South Ossetia. After the war, Russia recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Georgia’s other breakaway region of Abkhazia.
Only a handful of other countries followed the Kremlin’s lead and recognised South Ossetia’s independence.
Any referendum in South Ossetia would strain relations between Russia and Georgia and predictably the Georgian government reacted strongly to Mr Tbililov’s statement.
“It just confirms the provocative policy which Russia is pursuing on South Ossetia. It is a continuation of Russia’s policy of ‘creeping occupation’,”Gigi Gigiadze, Georgia’s deputy foreign minister, told media.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Hundreds of people demonstrated in central Tbilisi against a potential deal with Gazprom to supply gas to Georgia. The demonstration was a response to a meeting last month between the Georgian government and Gazprom. Georgia and Russia fought a war in 2008 and relations are still strained.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Former Armenian PM Tigran Sargsyan will take over as chairman of the Eurasian Economic Commission on Feb. 1, an appointment that highlights Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence over the group.
The Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) announced Mr Sargsyan’s appointment after a meeting in Astana. Mr Sargsyan succeeds Russian Viktor Khristenko.
According to media, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said of Mr Sargsyan’s appointment: “His candidacy is supported by the Russian President as they worked together some time ago.”
The Eurasian Economic Commission runs the EEU — which also includes Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as its members — on a day-to-day basis, and Mr Sargsyan’s appointment should, at first sight, give Armenia more influence over the trade bloc.
The reality is different, though. The EEU is a Russian project and Mr Lukashenko’s words show just how influential Mr Putin is over the group. Without his support, Mr Sargsyan could not have been appointed as chairman.
Since April 2014, Mr Sargsyan has been the Armenian ambassador to the United States. He had been PM between 2008-14 but quit abruptly after his government’s reforms to the state pension programme proved unpopular.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Several high-profile personalities attended the funeral in Atyrau, west Kazakhstan, of former Kazakh PM Nurlan Balgimbayev, who died on Oct. 14 aged 67 from cancer. PM Karim Massimov read a message from Pres. Nursultan Nazarbayev.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan released official results for its Oct. 4 parliamentary election that cemented the Social Democrat’s (SDK) grip on power. The SDK, the party of President Almazbek Atambayev, won 38 seats, up from 26 in 2010. Second was Respublika-Ata Jurt with 28 seats. The Kyrgyzstan party won 18 seats, Onuugu- Progress 13 seats, Bir Bol 12 seats and Ata-Meken 11 seats.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)
BISHKEK/Kyrgyzstan, OCT. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Parliamentary elections in Kyrygzstan on Oct. 4 may be being lauded around the world as a great success for democracy in a region normally more closely associated with dictatorship and the rule of the autocrat but in some circles the gloom is palpable.
And its many of Bishkek’s Western-oriented youth who are the most pessimistic. This was the group that rebelled most strongly against the edict that to register to vote you had to hand over your biometric data to the authorities.
Many decided that it was better to safeguard your personal data and lose the vote.
Sitting in a university canteen in Bishkek, a group discussed the election. None of them had voted and none of them regretted this.
“I do not regret that I did not go to elections because I knew who would win, it was the same people and parties as in the 2010 elections,” said 23-year old Syrgak Arkabayev, a student.
He also said that he would not submit his biometric data ahead of the 2016 presidential elections either.
And he’s not alone. An estimate said that up to a third of Kyrgyzstan’s population had also decided not to file their biometric data to the authorities. They said that the authorities can’t be trusted to safeguard the data.
But in any case, and this undermines the argument that democracy in Kyrgyzstan is in rude health, the dissenters said that there had been little motivation to vote in the election.
“I don’t think elections can change something in Kyrgyzstan,” said Gulzat Matisakova, 24.
Meerim Batyrkanova, 23, who helped an OSCE team to observe elections in Balykchy, a town on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul told a Bulletin correspondent that she was disappointed with the preliminary list of deputies who won seats at the election.
“Mostly, there are the same faces of deputies, ministers and state officials in the list,” she said. “There will be no big changes in politics.”
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US State Department said it was disturbed by reports that opposition TV channel Rustavi2 may be forced off the air after a court seized a stake in the company, cutting off access to funds that it said it needed to survive. The US has warned the Georgian Dream coalition government about eroding democracy and media freedom in Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -Tajik authorities arrested Samikhon Kurbonov, the former chairman of Fononbonk, because of his family ties to Saidumar Khusaini, a high- ranking member of the now banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). Last week, Tajikistan’s Central Bank also placed Fononbonk under receivership.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
