AUG. 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Georgia issued an arrest warrant for former president Mikheil Saakashvili on charges that he abused his power and illegally privatised state assets during his 10 years in power. Mr Saakashvili, who is living in Europe, has said the new Georgian government is using the law to settle vendettas.
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(News report from Issue No. 194, published on Aug. 6 2014)
DANGHARA/Tajikistan JULY 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — To passersby this town of 25,000 people south east of Dushanbe, is indistinguishable from any other poor Tajik settlement.
On one side of the drag running through its centre there is a crowded but limited bazaar, hawking cheap products from China. On the other, the standard array of grocery stores with little to sell and taxi drivers waiting for non-existent customers.
But Danghara is an important part of impoverished Tajikistan’s political vocabulary. The town’s most famous son, Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon, stuffs his government with people from Danghara and its eponymous district.
Making up only 1% of the total population of Tajikistan, Dangharans nevertheless head the ministries of education, health and internal affairs. The first Deputy Prime Minister is also Danghara-born.
“Half of Danghara has already moved to Dushanbe,” said Daler Khalidoev, a courier who lives in the capital but comes from Khujand. “They still smell of the village.”
Since Soviet times, regional divisions have plagued Tajikistan. Back then most of the local elite were plucked from Leninabad region (now Khojand) in the north, now it seems that Dangharans are in favour.
At Mr Rakhmon’s encouragement international organizations have built and equipped Danghara general hospital, one of the best in the country, at a cost of roughly $20m. The newly created Danghara Free Economic Zone 10km outside the city, will host strategic investments such as an Iranian detergent factory worth $1.4b and a Chinese oil refinery that will refine over 1m tonnes of crude per year.
“(It’s) jobs for his people,” said Khalidoev, the courier from Khojand.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia buried its former president Eduard Shevardnadze with full military honours at his residence outside Tbilisi. Shevardnadze had been the Soviet Union’s foreign minister under Mikhail Gorbachev. Former US Secretary of State James Baker and other high profile foreign dignitaries attended the ceremony.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian Dream, a political coalition set up in 2012 by Georgia’s richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili, completed its clean sweep of the country’s major political offices by winning a run-off in the Tbilisi mayoral election. Davit Narmania, the Georgian Dream candidate, won with nearly 75% of the vote.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 26 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – There was a very strong sense of déjà vu around an official Turkmen government announcement this month. Media reported that the Turkmen government had announced that it would build a statue to the current president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.
When he took over the presidency in 2007 from Saparmurat Niyazov, the first president of post-Soviet Turkmenistan, one of his first stated actions with to dismantle the personality cult his predecessor had built up. This included a gold statue of Niyazov built on an enormous plinth in the centre of Ashgabat.
International observers also cheered when he started to open Turkmenistan up to foreign investment. It is now one of the region’s major gas producers, a position it should strengthen further over the next few years.
There have, though, been increasingly strong signals that Mr Berdymukhamedov also wants to build up a personality cult of his own and that worried observers.
He has been shown on state television berating hapless officials, he makes sure that he wins Turkmenistan’s most important horse race each year and now, it appears, he has authorised a statue of himself.
Foreign minister Kasymkuly Babayev was shown on state television giving a tour of the construction site to Mr Berdymukahmedov. He addressed Mr Berdymukhamedov by his preferred moniker of Arkadag, or Protector.
“In the name of the people of the country, of the leaders of (state) structures, (we) appeal to the head of state to decide to establish on one of the beautiful corners of Turkmenistan’s capital, a monument to President Arkadag,” media quoted him as saying. This all sounds very familiar.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Kyrgyzstan sentenced former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev to life in prison for ordering soldiers to fire at street demonstrations in 2010. The sentence is largely symbolic as Bakiyev fled Kyrgyzstan in 2010 and now lives in Minsk.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prosecutors in Georgia charged former president Mikheil Saakashvili with illegally breaking up an anti-government demonstration in 2007, taking over a television station and expropriating a businessman’s assets.
Mr Saakashvili, who has previously declined to appear in front of a court to face the charges, described them as politically motivated.
Georgian politics is sharply polarised and since the Georgian Dream coalition, led by Georgia’s richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili, came to power in the parliamentary elections in 2012 and the presidential vote in 2013 it has chased and charged Mr Saakashvili’s former associates with various crimes.
Both the EU and the US have criticised the Georgian Dream for persecuting former high-ranking officials but, despite Georgia’s continued pro-Western agenda, they have been unable to stop the charges.
Mr Saakashvili left Georgia last year, after the presidential election, to avoid facing charges which he said would be fabricated and levied against him.
The United States considered Mr Saakashvili a key ally and charges levied against him will irritate them.
“Commitment to the rule of law means both that everyone must comply with the law in a democratic society and that the legal system should not be used as a tool of political retribution,” the US State Department said in a statement.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A new report released by the Kyrgyz government’s main think tank, the National Institute of Strategic Studies (NISS), said that joining the Customs Union (CU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EaEU) may trigger short term economic and social discomfort.
The report is the first serious analysis of the costs and benefits of membership carried out by the government itself. It will make for troubling reading for President Almazbek Atambayev who is still trying to sell the idea of membership of the CU/EaEU to the general public.
Membership of the CU will probably trigger inflation which may lead to political unrest and possibly even a rise in Islamic radicalism, the report said. The Macroeconomic situation may subsequently improve, the report added, without making predictions as to how long that might take.
The report also stressed several benefits of the CU, including duty-free oil imports from Russia — a benefit Kyrgyzstan already enjoys — and security via the Collective Security Treaty Organization, of which Kyrgyzstan is already a member.
On Kyrgyzstan’s frail democracy, the report was also incisive. Parliamentarianism would be better developed outside the EaEU than inside it, while norms of governance and nationalist sentiment in Russia could hamper Kyrgyzstan’s political development, the report said.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
JULY 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Concerned about possible unrest connected with electricity price increases, Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan has ordered his policy chiefs to investigate whether it can soften the price rises for less well-off families, media reported.
Last month Armenia announced that it would increase the price for electricity by 10% form Aug. 1, its first price increase in two years.
Opposition politicians have said that the price increase will trigger inflation across the country and that this is just the first of several price planned price rises.
Armenia’s government has already had to negotiate through a difficult year.
A government resigned because of public unhappiness over its pension reform plans, economic growth estimates have been downgraded because of sanctions on Russia and now an electricity price increase threatens to erode the government’s popularity further.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
JULY 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man and leader of the coalition that defeated former president Mikheil Saakashvili in three consecutive elections, will host a talk show, media reported. This is important as it gives Mr Bidzina, who is a former Georgian PM, a direct voice to ordinary Georgians.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
