Tag Archives: government

New property tax in Armenia will hit the poor, says economist

JUNE 23 (The Bulletin) — A new property tax due to be introduced this year in Armenia will fall more heavily on the poor than on the wealthy, an economist said. PM Nikol Pashinyan, who frames his government and the 2018 revolution that propelled it to power as being on the side of the poor, wants the new tax to bolster the budgets of local councils, but economist Suren Parsyan told Open Democracy that the move will increase tax burdens for poor people who inherited apartments in central Yerevan when the Soviet Union collapsed.

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— This story was first published in issue 451 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, published on June 23 2020

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Kyrgyzstan ignores evidence of officials’ corruption

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JUNE 18 (The Bulletin) — Anti-corruption activists accused Kyrgyzstan of ignoring evidence of corruption after Parliament approved the findings of a parliamentary commission which said that despite a well-documented investigation, officials had not laundered millions of dollars. The commission said although Kyrgyz customs officials were implicated in the report, Kyrgyzstan’s reputation should not be blighted because the cash had come from private Kyrgyz and Uzbek businessmen.

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— This story was first published in issue 451 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, published on June 23 2020

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Kyrgyz president sacks deputy PM and health minister over coronavirus response

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APRIL 5 (The Bulletin) — At least two people have now died with COVID-19 in Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyz health workers said. They both died in a hospital in Nookat in the south of the country, the epicentre of the outbreak in Kyrgyzstan. Officials have said that pilgrims returning from the Hajj in Mecca to their homes in and around Osh and Jala-Abad spread the coronavirus.

Looking to deflect criticism pf the government’s response to the spread of the coronavirus, Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov sacked health minister Kosmosbek Cholponbayev and deputy PM Altynai Omurbekova (April 1). He said that they had been too slow to identify the source of the virus in the country and said that their work was “unsatisfactory”.

The state-of-emergency forced a court in Bishkek to postpone the trial of former president Almazbek Atambayev and 13 other defendants who are charged with inciting deadly clashes with the security forces in August 2019 (March 30).

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— This story was first published in issue 441 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

COMMENT: Governments will be judged on how they deal with the coronavirus

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MARCH 26 (The Bulletin) — With the global impact and disruption of Covid-19 becoming apparent, it is time to see what the governments of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are made of. Their responses now will forge their reputations. They will be judged.

And, so far, reactions have been wildly different.

Turkmenistan and Tajikistan appear to be pretending that the Covid-19 pandemic is not happening. Neither country has reported cases and in Tajikistan people are being encouraged to continue with their lives as normal. Last weekend thousands of people gathered to celebrate the Persian New Year and President Emomali Rakhmon has barely broken with his official engagements. In Ashgabat, President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has talked up herbal remedies to the pandemic.

Berdymukhamedov and Rakhmon may be the Central Asian versions of Nero. While Rome burnt for a week in 64AD, Emperor Nero fiddled, or at least that is the popular perception.

Elsewhere the reaction of governments to the Covid-19 pandemic has been more mainstream. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Armenia have all ordered lockdowns over their main cities and announced economic packages that will support business. Kyrgyzstan has applied to the IMF to help dampen its own Covid-19 epidemic which appears linked to people in the more religious and conservative south of the country returning home from the Hajj in Saudi Arabia.

In Azerbaijan, the approach has veered away from the orthodoxy, as it often does. Instead of offering the government grants and loans favoured by other countries to keep business running and to buy extra supplies and resources for its health service, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev set up a special fund that would accept donations from companies, government agencies and the wealthy.

Never one to miss an opportunity to self-promote, top billing on the website currently goes to Aliyev and his wife, Mehriban, who is also the vice-president, for donating their salaries for 2020 to the fund. The website doesn’t say how large these donations were.

Covid-19 will shrink growth rates and possibly even economies across the region. The people of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are used to big, interventionist and, some would say, authoritarian government. Now these leaders have the opportunity to show their people that this power can be used to good effect in a national emergency.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Uzbekistan tweaks hated registration system

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MARCH 19 (The Bulletin) — Uzbekistan’s government unveiled a new registration system for people wanting to live and work in Tashkent which will replace the Soviet ‘propiska’ system that was so hateD. The ‘propiska’ system made it expensive, time-consuming and complicated for people to move to Tashkent from regional Uzbekistan. Earlier this year, the government said that it wanted to change this system. Now it has published a new set of rules which will force people moving to Tashkent to register with the police, as before, but also allow them to roll over temporary permits more easily. The Uzbek government wants to liberalise Soviet control systems.

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— This story was first published in issue 440 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Mirziyoyev promotes Western educated official to be finance minister

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FEB. 25 2020 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev swapped up his top economic team by making former deputy Central Bank chief Timur Ishmetov finance minister and shifting Jamshid Kucharov from the finance minister to be the economy and industry minister. The 41-year-old Mr Ishmetov, who was partially educated at the University of Birmingham, represents the start of a generational shift in Uzbekistan’s bureaucracy away from ministers who were trained under the USSR to those who have studied in the West.

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— This story was first published in issue 438 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

US warns Georgia that it must improve its commitment to democracy

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TBILISI/DEC. 24 2019 (The Bulletin) — The United States told Georgia’s government that it had to improve its commitment to democracy after weeks of anti-government protests and a counter-demonstration organised by the Georgian Dream coalition.

The intervention into the domestic politics of the US’ most loyal regional ally will be seen as a blow to Georgia leader Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country’s richest man and the architect of the Georgian Dream coalition.

In a statement, the US State Department said that it supported dialogue between opposition groups and the government.

“We urge the Georgian government to reinforce its commitment to the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and rule of law by ensuring that its judicial and prosecutorial system is free of political bias,” it said.

Rights groups have said that the Georgian Dream government has started to use the courts to pursue personal vendettas, allegations that the Georgian Dream government has denied. Opposition groups also accuse the Georgian Dream government of trying to interfere with the appointment of Supreme Court judges.

But a senior Georgian Dream official brushed off the implied criticism in the US statement.
“Anyone who can read this statement knows very well that it is actually supportive,” said Irakli Kobakhidze, the Georgian Dream executive secretary.

Protesters have demonstrated since MPs voted last month against backing plans to introduce proportional representation at next year’s parliamentary election. The government, though, in an attempted to compromise has said that the number of MPs elected by a first-past-the-post system will be reduced at the election.

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— This story was first published in issue 432 of the weekly Bulletin on Dec. 27 2019

Lydian calls in protection from creditors over Armenian mine dispute

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YEREVAN/DEC. 23 2019 (The Bulletin) — Lydian International, the owner of the Amulsar gold mine in Armenia, said that it had called in protection from creditors while it held talks with them and restructured its loans.

For Armenia’s reputation as a place to do business, news that one of its most high-profile investors has had to call for protection from creditors will be damaging.

The company, which has registrations in Canada, Britain and the US, has been unable to access the Amulsar mine in the southeast of the country since June 2018 because local activists have blocked the single track road running up to the mine. They say that Lydian is causing environmental damage, accusations that Lydian denies.

Although the government of Nikol Pashynian has said it would disband the protests it has appeared less willing to do so in practice. Analysts have said that this is partly because the constituents that put Mr Pashinyan in power through a revolution in April and May 2018 are the same that are protesting against Lydian.

And in a statement, Lydian blamed the Armenian government for inaction which has turned creditors off the project.

“Despite its many public statements that there is no legal basis on which to prevent the Company’s development of the Amulsar Project, the Government of Armenia has failed to remove the illegal blockades,” Lydian said. “As a result, the Company’s lenders were not prepared to further extend a previously announced forbearance agreement, which expired on December 20, 2019.”

Lydian said that it had been granted 10 days of protection from creditors.
The Armenian government has not commented.
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— This story was first published in issue 432 of the weekly Bulletin on Dec. 27 2019

Kyrgyzstan’s government targets anti-corruption reporters

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DEC. 18 2019 (The Bulletin) — Rights activists accused the Kyrgyz government of targeting news agencies who had reported on alleged corruption by senior officials by briefly closing down their websites and bank accounts. In November the Berlin-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) the Kyrgyz service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Bishkek-based news website Kloop published their investigation into money laundering in the Kyrgyz Customs Committee. Since then protesters have demanded the resignation of several officials, although the government has dodged taking action.
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— This story was first published in issue 432 of the weekly Bulletin on Dec. 27 2019

Dozens of anti-government protesters arrested in Kazakhstan

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DEC. 16 2019 (The Bulletin) — Police in Kazakhstan arrested dozens of people in Nur Sultan and Almaty for protesting in favour of political reform and also against the continued influence of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev. In March this year, Mr Nazarbayev announced his retirement as president but said he would still influence the government through his position as chairman of the National Security Council. There has been a large number of anti-government protests in Kazakhstan this year.

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— This story was first published in issue 432 of the weekly Bulletin on Dec. 27 2019