JAN. 21 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Alla Dzhioyeva, South Ossetia’s ex-education minister who beat a Moscow-backed candidate in a presidential election last year, demanded she be handed power. A re-run of the annulled election is scheduled for March 25. Political tension in the Georgian rebel state is potentially explosive for the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 74, published on Jan. 26 2012)
JAN. 18 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Paris-based intergovernmental International Energy Agency warned that unrest last month in west Kazakhstan could slow investment in the Kazakh oil and gas sector, Bloomberg reported. This is the first warning from a major institution that violence which killed at least 17 people could impact the investment climate.
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(News report from Issue No. 73, published on Jan. 19 2012)
JAN. 18 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen president Kurbanguly Burdymukhamedov will face seven token opponents in the country’s Feb. 12 presidential election, the Central Election Commission confirmed when it published the official candidate list. Mr Berdymukhamedov’s opponents are drawn from government ministries and state companies.
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(News report from Issue No. 73, published on Jan. 19 2012)
JAN. 18 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh authorities have been touting the parliamentary election on Jan. 15 as a democratic leap forward.
As expected Nur Otan, the party of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, won with 80% of the vote. Behind it was Ak Zhol with 7.5% and the Communist People’s Party (CPP) with 7.2%.
Both Ak Zhol and CPP gain seats in parliament by passing a 7% barrier, therefore ending a one-party parliament. This, the authorities say, shows Kazakhstan’s commitment to democracy.
Except that it doesn’t.
Both Ak Zhol and the CPP are overtly pro-presidential. The new parliament may have three different parties but it will still have only one voice.
The Kazakh authorities had also neatly dispatched the real opposition in the run-up to the election. The Central Election Commission suspended the Communist Party for 6 months in October and also banned other opponents on technicalities in the weeks before the election.
At a small rally in Almaty on Jan. 17, opposition leaders described the election as a fraud and called for a mass demonstration on Jan. 28. The crushing apathy of the voters means that a decent turnout for the rally is unlikely.
Still, there are more and more dissenting voices on the streets. A bank worker stood in the snow and listened to the opposition leaders. She was disgusted with the election.
“It’s the Soviet way,” she said of the authorities’ attitude towards democracy and voters.
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(News report from Issue No. 73, published on Jan. 19 2012)
JAN. 13 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Elections observers from the former Soviet Union will monitor Turkmenistan’s presidential election on Feb. 12 2012. However, Europe’s main election monitoring group, the OSCE, has said that political freedom is so restricted in Turkmenistan that there is no point in sending a vote monitoring team.
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(News report from Issue No. 72, published on Jan. 13 2012)
JAN. 10 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev overruled an earlier decision by the Constitutional Council to cancel voting in a parliamentary election in the town of Zhanaozen. Zhanaozen has been under a state-of-emergency since rioting on Dec. 16 killed at least 16 people.
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(News report from Issue No. 72, published on Jan. 13 2012)
JAN. 4 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s president, extended a state-of-emergency by 26 days in Zhanaozen, the town near the Caspian Sea at the centre of rioting last month that killed 16 people. The state-of-emergency had been set to end on Jan. 5. It now ends on Jan. 31 and falls over a parliamentary election planned for Jan. 15.
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(News report from Issue No. 71, published on Jan. 5 2012)
DEC. 26 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Looking to impose his authority after the riots, Mr Nazarbayev sacked his son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, as head of the sovereign wealth fund. Most of the rioters had been ex-oil workers and, as head of the fund, Mr Kulibayev had been in charge of the state energy company. He was seen as a potential successor to Mr Nazarbayev. Umirzak Shukeyev, a deputy PM, replaced Kulibayev as head of the fund.
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(News report from Issue No. 71, published on Jan. 5 2012)
DEC. 27 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Georgian court denied citizenship to Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country’s richest man and main political rival to President Mikheil Saakashvili. Mr Ivanishvili lives in Georgia and was born in the country but he currently holds Russian and French citizenship. He has said he will renounce both in order to become a Georgian citizen and enter politics.
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(News report from Issue No. 71, published on Jan. 5 2012)
DEC. 16 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Led by the Social Democrats, four parties formed a new government coalition in Kyrgyzstan. The Social Democrats are the party of new president Almazbek Atambayev although the new PM will be Omurbek Babanov from Respublika. Excluded from the coalition is Ata-Zhurt which represents Kyrgyz from the south.
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(News report from Issue No. 70, published on Dec. 22 2011)