APRIL 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Armenia raided the homes of four opposition activists they say had plotted riots during a planned memorial on the 100th anniversary later this month of an alleged massacre by Ottoman Turks of Armenians in eastern Turkey.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Roughly 55% of Georgians feel the country is heading in the wrong direction, a new poll for the US political group International Republican Institute (IRI) said.
This is a higher proportion than at any time since September 2009, during the aftermath of a brief war against Russia in 2008, when 63% of respondents said the country was heading in the wrong direction.
It is also, and this is important, the first time since March 2010 that a higher proportion of people have said that Georgia is heading in the wrong direction rather than the right direction. The IRI poll is, perhaps, the most accurate in Georgia and is a decent weather-mast to judge the general mood.
And it’ll make nasty reading for the governing Georgian Dream coalition which is having to deal with various economic problems as well as internal squabbling and accusations that it is using the Georgian justice system to settle old scores with officials who served under former president Mikheil Saakashvili.
In the IRI poll people’s main worries were the economy and Russian aggression. Over 60% of the respondents said the economy had worsened in the past couple of months and 76% said that Russia was the main threat to Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Former Georgian defence minister Irakli Alasania accused his successor, Mindia Janelidze, of ditching a deal to buy air-to-ground missiles from France, media reported. Mr Alasania, sacked last year, said scrapping the deal weakened Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ukraine rejected Georgia’s request to extradite former president Mikheil Saakashvili, media reported. The government in Kiev, which is locked in a battle for control of eastern Ukraine with Russia, has appointed Mr Saakashvili as a special adviser. He is wanted in Georgia for alleged crimes.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
MARCH 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A parliamentary inquiry in Armenia said the government subsidised gas for consumers between 2011 and 2013 ahead of a controversial buyout of the pipeline network by Russia’s Gazprom.
The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) said the government had previously denied it was subsidising gas imports from Russia.
The Armenian government was desperate both to retain support ahead of an election and to write off a $300m debt to Gazprom. To do this, it needed the public’s support to sell the pipeline distribution network.
The inquiry’s findings will pile more pressure on Armenia’s president Serzh Sargsyan whose administration has become increasing unpopular.
The RFE/RL report also said Gazprom cut the gas price when Armenia agreed to join the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which also includes Belarus and Kazakhstan.
“The commission has found documentary evidence of unpublicized Russian-Armenian agreements that gradually raised the gas price from $180 to $270 per thousand cubic meters in 2011-2013,” RFE/RL reported.
“Gazprom cut the price to almost $190 per thousand after Armenia agreed to join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union in late 2013.”
This is yet more evidence that Russia pressured Armenia into joining the EEU.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – During a briefing, Senator Yertargyn Astayev, a member of parliament’s budget committee, said ministries might not have enough cash to fulfil projects unveiled by Mr Nazarbayev’s Nurly Zhol party.
According to Mr Astayev, the interior ministry, which deals mainly with law enforcement and migration issues, will soak up the largest budget cut of $225m.
But, importantly, Mr Astayev also said finances earmarked for large infrastructure projects were going to be “placed under strict control”.
The hint was clear. The investments envisaged by Mr Nazarbayev are under threat.
Economic turmoil in the region has forced Kazakhstan into cutting the budget.
Mr Nazarbayev said that various departments had to save a combined $3.3b.
And the cutbacks have caught the public’s attention too.
Rauan, a 43-year-old engineer from Almaty said the government should ditch various high-profile but less useful projects such as EXPO-2017.
“Now we are funding these projects, designed only to feed our pride, at our own expense,” he said. “Perhaps our ambitions are too high.”
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Without any irony, apparently, the authorities in Uzbekistan declared Islam Krimov the winner of a presidential election on Sunday with 90% of the vote.
This is the fourth consecutive presidential election that the 77-year-old Mr Karimov has won since the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991. It’s also the fourth consecutive election Western observers said was unfair. The other candidates, Western observers said, all supported Mr Karimov.
The reality is that the presidential election was a choreographed affair design to impose top-down stability over the country as it grapples with worsening economic conditions across the region.
It was also designed, at least in the short-term, to put an end to any chat of succession or replacing Mr Karimov. Last year his eldest daughter, Gulnara Karimova, who was once widely feared, lost her grip on power and is now under house arrest. Her closest associates are in prison, found guilty of various economic crimes.
The biggest question for Uzbekistan and Central Asia is how the Uzbek elite replace Mr Karimov. For years there has been speculation about his health and although he played a high-profile role in the election he disappeared from view just before campaigning began.
The next few years are vital for sorting out a smooth transition of power.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Maxim Bakiyev, the son of former Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, is living in a £3.5m ($5m) mansion in southern England, the transparency lobby group Global Witness reported. The mansion is owned through various off-shore companies. Mr Bakiyev is wanted in Bishkek for various financial crimes.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
MARCH 25 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — Nurlan Kapparov, a key member of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s inner cortege and head of the Kazakh nuclear agency Kazatomprom, died of a suspected heart attack while on a business trip to Beijing. He was 44-years-old.
Slick and Western-educated, Kapparov was part of the post-Soviet wave of loyal bureaucrats who helped Nazarbayev retain his grip on power. Having headed state energy company KazakhOil, been Kazakhstan’s environment minister and, most recently, head of the state nuclear agency KazAtomProm, sources said that Kapparov had the potential to be a senior government minister.
While he never openly showed such lofty ambition, his presence in and around the government was keenly felt. He acted in the shadows, influencing Kazakhstan’s transition to a more nationalist energy policy. In 2000, as a young vice-minister of energy he was able to negotiate an increase in Kazakhstan’s share of the Tengiz oil field, to the detriment of the US’s Chevron.
Kapparov was also a powerful businessman. The Lancaster Group — which can be traced back to him — is the conduit through which several joint ventures with oil and mining multinationals accessed the Kazakh market. With strong ties to ENI and Saipem, Kapparov had been president of the Kazakhstan-Italy Business Council.
Kapparov had been in China together with Kazakh PM Karim Massimov to strike a handful of multi-billion dollars deals. Ahead of the main deal-making day, he was discovered on the floor of a lavatory in a Beijing restaurant. He had died of a suspected heart attack.
Hundreds gathered in Almaty to mourn his death at the Academy of Sciences although, importantly, veterans and state officials were bussed in to increase attendance. The divide between the government and ordinary people in Kazakhstan is such that enough the sudden death of senior officials is greeted with indifference.
Ambition and acumen brought Kapparov to power and his loss will be felt by the government.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)
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MARCH 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan released two opposition activists from prison, part of an amnesty ordered by Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev. Orkhan Yeubzade, a youth activist, was arrested in October on drug related charges. Bashir Suleiman, head of an election watchdog, was convicted of hooliganism.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)
