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Georgian Dream’s election victory

NOV. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — >> This has been a long election period in Georgia. Is it finally over?

>> I agree, it really has felt like a long process. This is partly because of the long campaign build up and partly because of Georgia’s complicated electoral system. There have been two main election rounds. The first on Oct. 8 was nationwide and included both a proportional representation element and a majoritarian element. At the end of this process, there were 50 seats which still had not elected a majoritarian MP. In these seats the top two candidates went head-to- head in a run-off on Oct. 31, giving the final tally.

>> Right. So to win a majoritarian seat you have to poll more than 50% of the votes. Is that right?

>> Yes, that’s right. A majoritarian seat, as the name suggests, is not a simple first-past-the-post system. The winner needs to poll more than half the votes, that’s why 50 seats needed a run-off.

>> So what is the final result? What is the breakdown?

>> Overall, the Georgian Dream won 115 seats out of the 150-seat parliament. This means they passed the 113-seat hurdle they needed to clear to allow them to change the constitution without relying on support from other parties. Georgian Dream won around 48% of the vote but the majoritarian system handed them a large majority. In 2012 the Georgian Dream won 85 seats, so this election represents a major success for them. By contrast the United National Movement party of Mikheil Saakashvili saw the number of seats it won collapse to 27 from 65. It was a disastrous election for them. Despite their fighting talk in the build up to the vote, voters essentially rejected the UNM and any possibility of a return to mainstream Georgian politics for Mikheil Saakashvili. He is currently the governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine. He’ll probably stay there for some time.

>> Is this it for the UNM, then?

>> That’s unclear but they need to have a major rebrand and to drop Saakashvili from their image. He comes with serious baggage, not least dire relations with Russia and allegations of torture in prisons during his time as president. The problem for the UNM is that he is such a dominating personality it might not be possible to just ditch him. To come back from that would represent quite a feat.

>> And, wasn’t there another party which did reasonably well?

>> Yes, the nationalistic and traditional Alliance of Patriots came up on the inside, unnoticed. It came third with just over 5% of the vote, giving it six seats in parliament. They are to the right of the Georgian Dream in their politics. The Industrialists party and an independent also won a seat each through the majoritarian system.

>> This gets complicated. So what does all this mean for Georgia?

>> Essentially this election confirms the Georgian Dream’s utter dominance. This is a crushing victory. On a policy level, the Georgian Dream has a constitutional majority to changes things as much as they want. They have already ripped up the form book in politics and they may want to do the same with society. They now have the power to do this and they have started already by promoting a change in the constitution that locks down marriage as an act only between man and woman. Georgian Dream has an agenda. They now have a four year window to impact how Georgian society operates. Expect some radical policies to come out of Georgia’s government in these four years.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

ABD to fund road in Tajikistan

NOV. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will give a $65.2m loan to Tajikistan to support the construction and remodelling of the Dushanbe-Kurgan Tyube road link. The highway serves as the country’s major north-south artery. The Tajik government will allocate $17.2m to the project. The OPEC Fund for International Development will also send a $12m loan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Uzbeks complain about price rises but steer clear of protests

TASHKENT, NOV. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Anatoliy, 60, earns a living by ferrying children to school each day across Uzbekistan’s Soviet- built capital and then hawking for fares in his battered Daewoo Matiz, along the city’s wide boulevards.

“I used to spend 80,000 sum (around $25.7) per week to buy fuel for my car and now I spend 120,000 sum ($38.6),” he said with a resigned air.

On the issue of protesting against the price rises, he shrugged and said that people in Uzbekistan were different from people in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. “People here are ready to say ‘hop mailly’ [“let it be” in Uzbek] to whatever decision is taken by officials,” he said.

Uzbekistan is considered by most human rights organisations to be one of the most repressive countries in the world and anti-government demonstrations are virtually unheard of.

Officials have said that the price rises were needed to balance the price of petrol sold in the regions and in Tashkent. Many people, though, are skeptical and have said that the government is exporting too much petrol for its own profit.

Shokhrukh, 40, another Tashkent-based gypsy cab driver sucked in a deep breath when he was asked about the petrol price rises.

“Our oil reserves in the Bukhara deposit are now insufficient to cover domestic petrol demands and the government has to import petrol from Russia which they have to pay for in roubles and US dollars,” he said.

Like other Central Asian currencies, the Uzbek sum has lost value over the past couple of years, pushing up inflation.

But is it not only drivers who will be impacted by the rise in the cost of petrol. Shukhrat, 40, an ethnic Uyghur in Tashkent, who sells cloth at Tashkent local bazaar said that all prices will have to increase off the back of such a big jump in the price of petrol.

“Food requires transportation and consequently fuel, I expect some shop owners will rise their food prices,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

OSCE starts monitoring Uzbek election

TASHKENT, NOV. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The OSCE, Europe’s democracy watchdog, started its first long-term vote observation mission in Uzbekistan ahead of a presidential election on Dec. 4

ODHIR, the OSCE’s vote monitoring unit, has only previously sent short-term missions to Uzbekistan.

In a statement, ODHIR said the government had invited it to send a long-term monitoring team. This is important because it adds more weight to the impression that Uzbekistan is adopting an outward- looking agenda since the death of Islam Karimov in September. He was regarded as difficult to deal with and mistrustful of the West.

ODHIR will send a 15-person team headed by Swedish diplomat Peter Tejler to Tashkent and 20 more people will be dispatched to the regions.

Another 250 observers will be sent to Uzbekistan a few days before the vote on Dec. 4.

Last year, ODHIR sent a short term mission to monitor a presidential election. They reported that the election had lacked competition and contravened the rule of law.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Work starts on building Tajikistan’s Rogun dam

OCT. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon inaugurated construction of the Rogun dam which should, if completed to the current plans, be the tallest dam in the world.

The Rogun dam project, though, is a project mired in controversy. Drawn up by the Soviets, it has been at the design stage for decades.

Downstream Uzbekistan is fiercely against the project, fearing that it will divert water that it needs to irrigate its cotton fields. Environmentalists have complained about the damage that will be caused to the natural landscape and human rights groups have documented the thousands of people forcibly moved to clear space for the project.

The inauguration of the Rogun dam project also came the day after a three-hour blackout hit the entire country. Supporters of the project said that this highlighted the need for the hydropower project to be built.

Italy’s Salini Impregilo was handed the $3.9b contract to build the Rogun dam earlier this year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Georgia’s GDP grows by 1.5%

NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s GDP grew by 1.5% in September, according to the country’s Statistics Committee. Total growth in Q3 2016 amounted to 2.2%, mirroring last year’s pace. Still, the government predicts a 3% growth this year and a 4% increase in 2017. In 2015, Georgia recorded a 2.8% GDP increase, its weakest since 2009.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Azerbaijan’s reserves fall, again

NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s foreign reserves fell by 3.1% in October to $4b, the Central Bank said in a statement. At the end of 2015, foreign currency holdings amounted to $5b. This year alone, Azerbaijan used up 20% of its reserves. Over the past two years, sustained low oil prices forced the government to intervene in the currency market and prop up the economy. In 2015, reserves shrank by 60%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

VimpelCom says that price inflation boosts profit in Uzbekistan

TASHKENT, NOV. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian telecoms operator VimpelCom said revenues in Uzbekistan grew 5% in Q3 2016, compared to the same period in 2015 because of a new pricing mechanism and underlying inflation.

In Uzbekistan, VimpelCom started to link its mobile charges to the US dollar, after volatility in the Uzbek sum hit the company’s revenue stream. This pushed up mobile and data prices plans across the country. It said that average user revenue had risen by 14%.

Tougher competition, however, shrank the customer base of Vimpel- Com’s Beeline brand in the country.

“The Uzbek market continues to experience intense competition, however Beeline remains the leader.

The overall customer base decreased 6% to 9.6m, due to the launch of two new mobile operators in 2015,” the company said in a statement.

Subscribers numbers had fallen below 10m at end-2015, a 3-year low. Earlier this year, VimpelCom paid a fine of $795m after it admitted paying bribes in 2007/8 to access the Uzbek mobile market.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Uzbekistan Airways to start flights to London

NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — State-owned Uzbekistan Airways said it will start a short term direct connection to London Heathrow in December. The twice weekly flights will run from Dec. 9 to Dec. 20. This seems to be an attempt to test the feasibility of a renewed and stable connection to Europe’s financial capital, after direct flights became inconstant over the past decade.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Turkmen President visits Putin

NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Sochi during an official visit aimed at improving economic and trade ties. After a legal spat, Turkmenistan and Russia stopped trading gas, an important revenue stream for the Central Asian country. Mr Berdymukhamedov’s visit signals a potential rapprochement between the two countries.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)