Tag Archives: election

‘Kardashian bond’ launched in Armenia

SEPT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kim Kardashian, the 32-year-old Los Angeles-based ethnic Armenian, is best known across the globe for starring in a reality TV show. Now she’ll also be known, in some circles at least, for lending her name to Armenia’s inaugural sovereign debt issue.

Armenia’s $700m Eurobond issue on Sept. 23, unofficially dubbed the ‘Kardashian bond’, did rather well. This was Armenia’s first sovereign debt issue and a real test of investors’ confidence in the country and appetite for risk in the South Caucasus.

Armenia’s government had said it needed to raise the cash to pay back a $500m loan it borrowed from Russia in 2009 to weather the global financial crisis.

It’s been a busy, somewhat controversial, year for Armenia with a disputed presidential election in February and a surprise decision last month to eschew closer ties with the EU to instead join Russia’s Customs Union. The economy, too, has caused some concern with inflation hovering around 9%, far above the Central Bank’s target.

Regardless, investors warmed to Armenia’s Kardashian bond and the initial yield on the 7-year bond was shortened to 6.25% from 6.375%, according to Reuters.

Not a bad debut on the sovereign debt market for Armenia and Kim Kardashian.

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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)

Election debate turns into chaos in Azerbaijan

SEPT. 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A TV debate between nine of the 10 people standing in Azerbaijan’s presidential election descended into farce when pro-president candidates shouted insults at Camil Hasanli, the only genuine opposition figure. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, standing for re-election, didn’t take part in the debate.

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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)

Reporter arrested in Azerbaijan

SEPT. 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Baku arrested opposition journalist Perviz Hashimli for smuggling weapons into Azerbaijan from neighbouring Iran. Mr Hashimli denied the charges. Human rights activists have accused the Azerbaijani government of cracking down on opposition ahead of an Oct. 9 presidential election.

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(News report from Issue No. 153, published on Sept. 25 2013)

Azerbaijan’s election campaign starts

SEPT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Officially, campaigning in Azerbaijan’s Oct. 9 presidential election kicked off on Sept. 16 although reports from Baku suggested that not many people have noticed.

The election script already appears to have been written. The vote will deliver a third consecutive five-year term for President Ilham Aliyev and the opposition will complain of fraud and an uneven playing field.

Azerbaijan’s economy is booming and living standards are rising, mainly due to energy sales, although opposition and human rights groups complain that this has come at the expense of personal freedoms.

On Sept. 13, Azerbaijan’s Central Election Committee (CEC) barred Ilgar Mammadov from the election. A genuine opposition leader, Mr Mammadov has been sitting in jail awaiting formal prosecution for fomenting anti-government protests in February.

Since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, vote monitors from the EU’s official monitoring unit have never judged an election in Azerbaijan to be free and fair.

And Azerbaijan’s, rather beleaguered, opposition have already complained that Mr Aliyev has been campaigning before the official start, giving election-style speeches and handing out free apartments to journalists.

The CEC officially registered 10 candidates for the election, including Mr Aliyev and opposition candidate Jamil Hasanli. The other candidates are pro-presidential.

In an interview with the BBC on the eve of the election campaign start, Mr Hasanli described Mr Aliyev as an autocrat.

“We wish to move from authoritarianism to democracy through a normal election,” he said. As well as Mr Haslani’s strongly held views on Mr Aliyev, though, it was also clear from the interview that he thought Mr Aliyev would win another term.

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(News report from Issue No. 152, published on Sept. 18 2013)

Deadline approaches for candidates in Azerbaijan

SEPT. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Election Committee (CEC) has registered 21 candidate nominations for the presidential election on Oct. 9, media reported. The CEC has to approve the nominations before the start of campaigning on Sept. 16. The election is likely to hand incumbent President Ilham Aliyev another five-year term.

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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)

Opposition candidate disqualified in Azerbaijan

AUG. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Election Committee disqualified Rustam Ibragimbekov, a well-known screenwriter, from standing as the main opposition candidate in a presidential election. Mr Ibragimbekov holds dual Azerbaijan-Russia citizenship, illegal under the election rules.

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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)

HRW criticises Azerbaijan

SEPT. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch, the New York-based lobby group, accused Azerbaijan’s government of “a deliberate, abusive strategy to limit dissent”. It also said that this campaign against dissenters and opposition activists was intensifying in the run up to the Oct. 9 election.

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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)

Tajikistan sets presidential election date

AUG. 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s parliament called a presidential election for Nov. 6. Incumbent president, Emomali Rakhmon, is expected to win a large victory and another seven-year term. He has ruled Tajikistan since the end of a civil war in the mid-1990s. Critics say the election will be a one-sided farce.

(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)

Economic slowdown in Georgia

AUG. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s economy will grow by only 4% this year, a drop from 6.5% in 2012, because of concerns over political instability, media said quoting the IMF. Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man, won a surprise victory in a parliamentary election in 2012. A presidential election is scheduled for Oct. 27.

(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)

Opposition switches candidate before election in Azerbaijan

SEPT. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In the end, Rustam Ibragimbekov’s bid to dislodge Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev from power didn’t even make it to election day on Oct. 9.

The country’s Central Election Committee disqualified the 74-year-old Oscar winning screenwriter on Aug. 27 for holding dual Azerbaijan-Russia citizenship.

Holding dual citizenship is clearly against election rules in Azerbaijan and Mr Ibragimbekov’s disqualification will be an embarrassment for the main secular opposition group.

It had been working hard to build momentum around the popular Mr Ibragimbekov. Now it has to start again.

Mr Ibragimbekov’s replacement is Camil Hasanli, a respected academic who teaches at Baku State University and used to be an independent MP.

Mr Hasanli, 61, may be a respected historian but he doesn’t have the same public persona, inside and outside Azerbaijan, as Mr Ibragimbekov.

What the candidate switch does do, though, is perhaps underline one of the main opposition group’s weaknesses. The impression it gives is of a movement built for the country’s Soviet-era intelligentsia, rather than being a vigorous opposition movement spanning Azerbaijan’s different social strata.

(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)