SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s ministry of defence accused Armenian backed forces in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh of killing three Azerbaijani soldiers. The accusation marks another escalation in tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing civilians last week.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian utilities company Inter RAO sold Armenia’s electricity network for an undisclosed amount to the Moscow-based Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan. The deal has come as a surprise.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 30 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Real estate prices in the Georgian capital have fallen by 15% this year, a drop that industry insiders blame on the collapse in the value of the lari currency.
In an interview with The Conway Bulletin, Anna Jalagonia, president of the Georgian Association of Realtors, said a 40% fall in the lari since last summer had spooked foreign investors.
“Investors prefer to wait because of the unstable situation in the country,” she said.
This bodes badly for Georgia, whose economy is to a large extent dependent on foreign investment.
Like the rest of the region, a slump in oil prices and the sluggish economic performance of Russia, the region’s main driver, has undermined Georgia’s economy. The Central Bank has spent millions of dollars trying to protect the value of the lari, inflation is rising and GDP growth rates are being revised down.
Neli Goguadze, director of the real estate agency Kibe, said that the situation in Georgia’s real estate sector had reached a tipping point.
“The problems began a few months ago due to the devaluation of the national currency,” she said. “For there to be a revival, the market needs a serious boost.”
Last month, the Central Bank increased its key interest rate to 7%, it’s highest rate since December 2011, as it tried to support the lari.
But some real estate analysts said that this interest rate increase may actually cause more problems.
“Real estate transactions are usually made in US Dollars,” said Papuna Kokhtashvili, owner of the Georgian franchise of US-based RE/MAX Property Advisors. “The increase in interest rate for loans results in a reduction of demand for property.”
And is could get worse, as Ms Jalagonia of the Association of Realtors explained during her interview.
“At the end of the year the situation will be worse as the national currency rate will continue to influence the market and winter and the fall are usually slow times for real estate acquisition. That combined will be a problem,” she said. “Prices for residential real estate have already fallen by about 15% and will continue to decline.”
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 1 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s ministry of education ordered the Metkep publishing house to redraw a map used in one of its textbook which suggested Crimea was part of Russia.
Like most countries, Kazakhstan has not officially recognised Russia’s annexation of Crimea after a referendum last year in which the majority of people voted to leave Ukraine.
The Ukrainian embassy in Astana last week complained about the map in the school textbook, embarrassing the Kazakh government which needs to tread a fine diplomatic line between Russia and West.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan prosecutor-general Zakir Garalov accused a handful NGOs of straying outside the boundaries of their work permits and cooperating with journalists. Mr Garalov didn’t name the NGOs but the accusations could be interpreted as a warning ahead of a crackdown.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Shangfeng Cement, a Chinese cement producer, aims to raise 1.5b yuan ($235m) to fuel its expansion into Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The two projects Shangfeng plans in Central Asia both have a capacity to produce 3,200 tonnes of cement per day and will cost around $130m. Shangfeng plans to sell its cement in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
ASTANA/ Kazakhstan, OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Just when the crowd began to think that it was all over, the ball slipped into the back of Galatasaray’s net. The Astana Arena, with 30,000 FC Astana fans inside, shook with celebration.
The third own-goal of a mad and exciting match sealed a 2-2 draw for FC Astana in the first ever Champions League football game played in Central Asia.
Incredulous FC Astana fans were besides themselves with joy at the unexpected result.
“I am not keen on football, but when there are games like this, I turn into a real football-freak” said Bota, a 27- year-old FC Astana fan. On her nails she had painted the Kazakh flag.
The atmosphere at the Astana Arena, a state-of-the-art stadium with synthetic grass and retractable roof, was electric and very patriotic. The 30,000 FC Astana fans were dressed in blue-and-yellow, the colours of Kazakhstan’s flag. They didn’t stop singing and chanting for the whole 90 minutes.
In Kazakhstan’s Premier League many seats are empty but not for this match against Istanbul’s Galatasary. On the pitch FC Astana were not just representing the Kazakh capital, they were representing the entire country.
“This game is a way to prove that we are not Boratstan,” said Bota in a reference to the fictional comic character called Borat. “We have a lot of things to show and be proud of.”
Kazakh fans hadn’t forgotten that Galatasaray forward Lukas Podolski tweeted a picture of Borat after his team were drawn in the same group as FC Astana. Every time he touched the ball, they booed.
FC Astana is essentially a state club, part of the President’s Sport Club Astana alongside an ice hockey and cycling team, and financed by the national fund Samruk-Kazyna.
And this historic football match helped distract many people from the increasing economic gloom. Perhaps with some irony, one of the FC Astana chants was “We believe in Astana. We do not care about devaluation.”
Whether they qualify or not for the next round of the Champions League, FC Astana will also host Atletico Madrid and Portugal’s Benfica this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said it would send an election monitoring team to Azerbaijan despite concerns over its human rights record.
There had been a growing expectation that PACE might follow its bigger European vote monitoring team at the OSCE’s ODHIR and cancel its planned mission to cover parliamentary elections on Nov. 1 in Azerbaijan.
But PACE has a softer reputation than ODIHR and has, in the past, been accused of turning a blind eye to Azerbaijan’s crackdowns on civil society. This year, though, it has vocally challenged the Azerbaijani president to improve human rights.
And Anne Brasseur, head of the Strasbourg-based assembly, confirmed that PACE would send a mission as part of its commitment to monitor democracy in the former Soviet Union.
“We decided to maintain the mission to Azerbaijan knowing that the human rights situation is not really good,” media quote Ms Brasseur as saying.
“We are going to observe several elections — elections in Ukraine, in Turkey, in Belarus, in Kyrgyzstan, and we are also going up observe the elections in Azerbaijan.”
Earlier this month ODIHR pulled out of covering Azerbaijan’s election after, it said, the government had halved its quota of observers. Its withdrawal pushed Europe-Azerbaijan relations — strained over the imprisonment of Azerbaijani activists and journalists — to a new low.
And without the ODHIR’s presence, Ms Brasseur said, Europe would not be able to make a full analysis on veracity of the Nov. 1 election. ODHIR had wanted to send 30 long- term monitors and 350 short-monitors to cover the election. By contrast, PACE’s deployment is far smaller.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The imprisonment of a former mayor of Tbilisi from the opposition United National Movement (UNM) has underscored fears that Georgia’s governing Georgian Dream (GD) is using the judiciary to settle scores.
Gigi Ugulava’s conviction came just after the Constitutional Court ruled that holding him 14 months in pre-trial detention was unconstitutional and set him free. Twenty-four hours later a court convicted him of using his position to give out hundreds of jobs to UNM loyalists and sentenced him to 4.5 years.
A former youth leader representing the “new guard” that brought Mikheil Saakashvilli to power after the Rose Revolution, Ugulava entered the mayor’s office before he turned 30. After the GD’s victory in parliamentary elections in 2012, he was forced from office in December 2013 amid accusations of misuse of funds.
The conviction of Ugulava is a harsh blow to the UNM in advance of the pivotal October 2016 parliamentary elections, a repeat of the 2012 contest that toppled Saakashvilli and eventually led to his leaving the country and his citizenship rather than face criminal charges.
Like a number of UNM officials, Saakashvilli is now plying his reformism for the new Western darling Ukraine, where he is now governor of Odessa.
Saakashvilli’s energetic reformism in Georgia produced massive overhauls in public administration and policing that are still considered among the best in the non-Baltic former Soviet Union.
But his centralization of power and demonisation of opponents, including through Ugulava’s position as head of the capital’s administration, eventually sparked the Georgian Dream backlash.
Georgia is grappling with the problem common across Eurasia of how to consolidate rule of law after a transition in government.
Uprooting corruption may well require prosecuting former officials, but it is hard to escape the sense that GD is repaying UNM its own repression in kind, rather than building a common polity where diverse parties can compete without fear of persecution if they lose or fall out with the ruling elite.
The cycle of accumulation, revolution, and persecution appears on track to continue which is bad news for Georgian democracy.
By NateSchekkan, programme director at Freedom House
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 29 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — A village in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, a Muslim area that retains strong links to the North Caucasus, has elected a woman as its leader, media reported.
The election of school teacher Tamar Margoshvili, 55, as head of Duisi village is notable because traditionally only men could lead the village.
“I am not any less skilled compared to the men of the village,” media quoted Ms Margoshvili as saying.
Ms Margoshvili’s promotion is a victory for modernisers who will be heartened that a woman has been able to break through one of the most traditional societies in Georgia.
Renata Skardžiūtė, political scientist at the Georgian Institute of Politics said: “Women started gathering in clubs in different villages, then managed to create women’s council of elders, something quite unprecedented in Muslim communities.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)