JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s parliament approved a plan to sell off the government owned Post Office. Armenia needs to update and modernise its Post Office which has 3,000 employees and 250 branches across the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – MPs in Kyrgyzstan voted overwhelmingly to pass the second reading of a controversial law that will ban so-called gay propaganda. To become law, the bill needs to pass a third reading and then be signed by President Almazbek Atambayev. Russia passed a similar law in 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – MPs in Kyrgyzstan resisted an attempt by the Ata-Meken party to impose stricter mining techniques at the Kumtor gold mine. Ata-Meken is part of the ruling coalition. Kumtor is owned by Toronto-based Centerra Gold. Kyrgyzstan has been arguing with Centerra over ownership of the mine.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia restored a rule which gave citizens of more than 100 countries the right to reside in the country for a year. Last year parliament scrapped the one year visa-free stay and imposed a 90 day limit. This was deemed a mistake.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
MAY 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s President Giorgi Margvelashvili said that he opposed stripping the Central Bank of its supervisory duties over the country’s commercial banks. As reported in last week’s Bulletin, reformers suggested that these powers should be given to an independent body.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
JUNE 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A law in Kyrgyzstan banning the import, registration and maintenance of righthand-drive cars came into force. The bill was signed into law earlier this year. Traffic experts in Kyrgyzstan have said that righthand drive cars are involved in more accidents than lefthand drive cars.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
JUNE 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament passed a preliminary reading of the so-called Foreign Agents Bill which will, basically, make it harder for local NGOs to receive money from Western organisations. The bill is similar to one passed by Russia in 2012.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
JUNE 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s prosecutor-general issued an arrest warrant for Gulmurod Khalimov, the paramilitary police chief who defected to IS in Syria.
Mr Khalimov was also formally stripped of his military title. He had been a colonel.
He appeared at the end of May in a video from Syria in which he cradled a sniper rifle and pledged to ferment revolution in Tajikistan.
Mr Khalimov had left his home in April, telling his wife that he was going away on a business trip for a few days.
Instead he became IS’ most high-profile recruit from Central Asia.
Central Asian countries are increasingly worried about the ability of IS to recruit disenfranchised and poor young men from the region. With his glamour and seniority, Mr Khalimov’s recruitment has added extra weight to the IS propaganda programme.
Mr Khalimov had led Tajikistan’s paramilitary OMON unit and had been trained by special forces in the United States and in Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
MAY 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s parliament said that it had started considering whether to scrap a law that bans people over the age of 70 from being president. This may sound arcane and fringe even, but it is also vitally important.
Repealing this law would allow current president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov to remain in power for as long as he wanted.
There are already very few checks and balances on his powers. And, according to Eurasianet, the man chairing the commission looking into the idea of scrapping the law is Mr Berdymukhamedov himself. At 57-years-old, Mr Berymukhamedov may be thinking about his future.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
MAY 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Traffic on Kyrgyzstan’s roads is growing by about 5% a year, Oleg Pankratov, Kyrgyzstan’s minister of economy, said. Mr Pankratov also said he wanted to introduce some way of charging foreign cars a fee for using Kyrgyzstan’s roads.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)