OCT. 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tax police have started an investigation into the finances of The Forum of Culture and Art of Uzbekistan, a charity linked to Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, media reported. The investigation may be aimed at unsettling Ms Karimova, part of a wider power struggle in Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has dominated Georgian politics for a decade, will leave office on Nov. 17. A week later his arch-foe, billionaire PM Bidzina Ivanishvili also plans to step down.
Mr Saakashvili’s replacement as president is former academic Giorgi Margvelashvili, Ivanishvili’s handpicked candidate in an Oct. 27 presidential election.
However, Mr Margvelashvili will largely be a figurehead. Under constitutional amendments that come into force on the day of his inauguration, broad powers pass to the PM.
With Mr Ivanishvili quitting as PM a year after winning a parliamentary election to begin what he says will be a campaign to strengthen civil society, Georgians are still guessing who will run the country.
Mr Ivanishvili, whose ruling Georgian Dream coalition will officially nominate the incoming PM before a vote in parliament, has said he will announce his decision later this week.
The two likeliest choices are health minister Davit Sergeenko, a doctor who previously ran the hospital in Ivanishvili’s hometown, and interior minister Irakli Garibashvili, a confidant of the PM who once headed his charity fund. Neither were widely known before they joined the cabinet.
But whoever becomes PM, Mr Ivanishvili has made it clear that he will retain a degree of control
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted against a deal with Toronto-listed Centerra Gold to split ownership of the Kumtor gold mine 50-50. Instead, parliamentarians want a new agreement which gives the country a majority 67% stake in Kumtor, Kyrgyzstan’s single biggest industrial asset.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) –Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev pardoned 152 prisoners, including ex-economy minister Farhad Aliyev, to mark the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, media reported. Mr Aliyev was jailed in 2005 for corruption. Some analysts interpreted his release as a softening of President Aliyev’s stance towards his opponents.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Utter the word Borat to a Kazakh diplomat and he or she may cringe.
It took years to purge the image of Kazakhstan — which wants to be seen as a modern, progressive country — from Borat, the boorish fictional character created by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for his 2006 film “Borat: Cultural learnings of America make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan”.
Now, though, it appears that the BBC has created another comedy to, potentially at least, poke more fun at the Central Asian republics.
The BBC will broadcast the first episode of its new three-part comedy on Oct. 23 called “Ambassadors”. It’s essentially a sideways, tongue-in-cheek look at the British diplomatic service and the challenges of a foreign posting in a little-known and far-away country.
The twist, for Central Asia at least, is that the fictional little-known and far-away country is called Tazbekistan. No prizes for guessing the mish-mash of republics it is based upon.
And there’s more. The pre-broadcasting blurb goes further. The plot is based around an incoming British ambassador’s attempts to get to grips with Tazbekistan’s idiosyncrasies. This includes being oil-rich and having a woeful human rights record.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Grigory Marchenko, the former chairman of the Kazakh Central Bank, told Russian media that he is considering moving into the private financial sector. Mr Marchenko also denied speculation that he was sacked from the Central Bank earlier this month. Instead, he insisted that he had quit for family reasons.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — If more evidence was needed that Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is building a personality cult it has come in the form of a book. Turkmenistan’s second post-Soviet president has penned an adoring book about his 81-year-old father, media reported.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — At the annual conference of the ruling Nur Otan political party, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said he supported the introduction of a wealth tax and wanted more people to learn English. The Nur Otan conference and Mr Nazarbayev’s pronouncements are a decent weather mast for future policy in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a seasoned politician and diplomat, to be the Speaker of the Senate. Speaker of the Senate is one of the highest ranking positions in the Kazakh government and Mr Tokayev’s appointment triggered succession chatter.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Just who is going to succeed the long-standing Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is the biggest political issue in Kazakhstan.
Mr Nazarbayev, 73, has led Kazakhstan since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. He has shaped Kazakhstan. The physical apex of Mr Nazarbayev’s power is his presidential palace, the Akorda, in the centre of Astana.
One of Mr Nazarbayev’s headaches, though, is the succession issue. He doesn’t have an obvious successor capable of holding together Kazakhstan’s notoriously fractious clans.
This means that when Mr Nazarbayev shuffles his lieutenants, it attracts close attention. So, when he pulled the career diplomat Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, 60, from United Nations in Geneva and appointed him to head the Senate, Kazakhstan-watchers started talking about succession.
It’s a familiar position for Mr Tokayev who had been Speaker of the Senate between 2007 and 2011. He has also previously served as PM and foreign minister.
And Mr Tokayev’s promotion to head the Senate is important. According to the constitution, if Mr Nazarbayev couldn’t run the country, for whatever reason, the Speaker of the Senate would take over.
Whether or not that means he will take over the presidency when Mr Nazarbayev finally retires is another question. There’s no doubt, though, that there is still a lot of conjecture and so-called Akorda-ology to come.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)