JULY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Kyrgyzstan sentenced Melis Myrzakhmatov, a former mayor of Osh and a firebrand politician with a large following to 7 years in prison for various financial crimes. Myrzakhmatov was viewed as a potential destabilising influence. He has been on the run since January 2014, when he lost his mayoral seat.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Western media lobby groups called for Azerbaijan to release imprisoned journalist Khadija Ismayilova who is accused of various financial crimes. Her trial was due to begin on July 24. Ms Ismayilova’s supporters say the charges have been fabricated.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
DUSHANBE, JULY 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Tajik government said official news should be sent first to the state news agency Khovar, prompting allegations of a media crackdown.
Bishkek-based Tajik news agency Ozodagon published a scan of the decree.
The decree said: “All official information, meetings of the Government of Tajikistan, the President of Tajikistan’s working visits within the country and abroad, international, republican and sectoral meetings should be provided first to Khovar state information agency, and only after that should be sent by the agency to other media.”
The authorities in Tajikistan have been limiting media freedom over the past few years. The West has accused Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon of increasingly authoritarian tendencies.
The new law is another step towards becoming a fully authoritarian state, said Dr Irshod Sulaymoni, an independent political analyst in Dushanbe.
“The decree essentially contradicts the laws, including the constitution, of Tajikistan and questions the reality of equal access to information given by the law,” he said. “I think that the decree is clearly intended to control the official news.”
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI — Georgia’s parliament approved the appointment of Vakhtang Gomelauri, the current minister of interior, as head of the new State Security Service.
Its a controversial move as the State Security Service, which will take over most of Georgia’s intelligence gathering duties, was created to break up the power of the interior ministry.
Before becoming the interior minister, Mr Gomelauri was the head of the bodyguard team protecting Georgia’s most powerful man Bidzina Ivanishvili who set up the ruling Georgian Dream coalition.
And Georgia’s opposition have already accused the government of turning the position into a political football with Mr Gomelauria’s appointment.
“Gomelauri’s appointment shows that setting up the State Security Service to depoliticise security related matters is an absolute farce,” said Chiora Taktakishvili, an MP for the United National Movement during the vote in parliament.
As head of the new State Security Service, Mr Gomelauri will be in charge of defending Georgia’s borders, fighting terrorism, and preventing corruption.
Lincoln Mitchell, a political scientist, told the Bulletin it was, always unlikely someone without a close relationship with Mr Ivanishvili would have been appointed to the position. He also said, though, that he thought the creation of the agency was a step in the right direction.
“The Georgian Dream government has made Georgia more free than the previous regime, but has not moved as quickly as it should have to dismantle the tools that their predecessors used to limit freedoms,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s parliament passed a final reading of a bill that strips supervision of the country’s commercial banking sector from the Central Bank. The World Bank had urged the government to drop the bill. President Giorgi Margvelashvili now has to sign the bill into law although he has said he may veto it.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
TBILISI, JULY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian state regulators approved a price increase for electricity, a rise that will irritate consumers and also the power companies who said the rise was not enough to cover the cost of production.
Electricity prices have become a major political issue across Central Asia and the South Caucasus because falling local currencies have forced up the cost of imports needed to fuel power stations.
In Armenia, thousands of people have protested for weeks about a sharp increase in electricity prices.
Perhaps mindful of the political fallout, Georgia’s regulators tried to limit price increases. The price rises appear to vary enormously between 2% and 30% depending on consumers’ overall annual use.
Zurab Gelenidze, CFO of Georgian Industrial Group, said the price rises were not enough. “The sustainability of the entire system will become questionable,” he told media.
Also reacting to the price rises, PM Irakli Garibashvili said the government would give out subsidies to some lower income families.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Tajikistan jailed Jaloliddin Mahmudov, a senior official in the opposition Islamic Renaissance party, for illegally handling weapons, media reported. Opposition groups in Tajikistan have said that they are being unfairly targeted by the authorities.
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – BISHKEK – Kyrgyzstan downgraded bilateral relations with the US because of an award the State Department gave to an imprisoned ethnic Uzbek human rights defender last week, media reported.
Relations between the US and Kyrgyzstan have been worsening since the US military withdrew from an air base outside Bishkek last year. Since then, Kyrgyzstan has drifted towards Russia, joining its Eurasian Economic Union and adopting laws on foreign-funded NGOs and homosexuals which the US has said infringes civil liberties.
The award was given by the US State Department to Azimzhan Askarov. He was imprisoned in the south of Kyrgyzstan in 2010 after ethnic fighting killed nearly 400 people in the city of Osh. His supporters said that the charges, inciting violence, had been fabricated.
After Askarov’s son travelled to Washington to pick up the award, Kyrgyz PM Temir Sariyev signed a decree denouncing relations, which will come into effect on Aug. 20. The move will mean tax breaks awarded to US companies will be cancelled.
On the streets of Bishkek, reaction was mixed. Some people welcomed the tough stance by Mr Sariyev, others were cautious.
“In a couple of years, we will become a colony of Russia,” said a 30-year-old resident of Bishkek. “It is indeed bad that we are losing such assistance because Kyrgyzstan is a poor country.”
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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JULY 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – YEREVAN — Armenia’s opposition accused President Serzh Sargsyan of trying to fiddle with the constitution so that he can run the country from parliament after he leaves the presidency in 2018.
Last week, Armenia’s Constitutional Court unveiled plans for a transition to a parliamentary democracy. Armenians are due to vote on the reforms in December.
The government has said a new system would strengthen democracy.
The opposition disagree.
“Serzh Sargsyan is carrying out the reform with one purpose only: to circumvent the constitutional ban on seeking a third term as president and thus extend his own power, Levon Zurabyan, the head of the ANC parliamentary faction,” said in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Armenia’s constitution currently concentrates power with the president. It limits him or her to two terms of five years, a ceiling that Mr Sargsyan will hit in 2018.
David Harutyunyan, an MP from the ruling Republican Party, defended the constitutional changes.
“The basic idea of constitutional reform is to prepare the country for a peaceful change of power, he told journalists at a press conference.
“The current constitution with a semi-hybrid form of government has brought some countries to a dangerous situation. For Armenia, it may have even more damaging consequences.”
There is precedent for reducing the power of the president and switching to a parliamentary democracy in the Central Asia and South Caucasus region.
JULY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s parliamentary speaker Davit Usupashvili travelled to NATO HQ in Brussels to urge for its membership of the Western military alliance to be sped up. “I told our partners very clearly, unequivocally that Georgia is ready for more,” he told Georgian media.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)