Tag Archives: politics

Georgia sets election date

APRIL 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili set the date for the upcoming parliamentary elections for Oct. 8. Mr Margvelashvili said he had consulted with PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili, a member of the Georgian Dream government coalition, who signed the decree the following day.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

 

Business comment: Panama’s Pandora’s Box

APRIL 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The leaking of millions of documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossak Fonesca, dubbed the Panama Papers, hit the headlines this week both for the number of secret documents it disclosed and for the profiles of those involved in hiding money in offshore accounts.

For the Central Asia/South Caucasus region, one important story is the large-scale involvement of the Azerbaijani Presidential family in the country’s gold business.

Investigations on the awarding of the Chovdar project contract to a consortium of offshore companies had already unveiled that Ilham Aliyev’s family was behind Globex International, which owned 11% of the venture.

The latest leaks, though, showed that Mr Aliyev’s daughters, Leyla and Arzu, in fact, also owned Panama-registered Londex Resources, which owned another 45% of the project.

This makes the presidential family the majority owner, with a combined stake of 56%, of a project that holds gold reserves previously valued by the government at around $2.5b.

Other important figures from the South Caucasus and Central Asia, such as Georgian billionaire and former PM Bidzina Ivanishvili and Nurali Aliyev, grandson of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, were also revealed to have hidden money in offshore accounts.

But this, although morally questionable, is not an illegal practice.

What is suspicious, and unfair, is when the Azerbaijani government awards the Presidential family’s unknown offshore companies a very favourable gold contract.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on  April 8 2016)

Tajik MPs wish to celebrate President’s day

APRIL 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) -A group of Tajik MPs proposed a bill to establish a holiday to celebrate President Emomali Rakhmon. The new holiday, which could be called either President’s Day or the Day of the Leader of the Nation, would further entrench Mr Rakhmon’s presence in Tajikistan’s public life. Last December, the Parliament passed a law to give Mr Rakhmon the title of Leader of the Nation.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

 

Georgian Dream’s partner quits government coalition

APRIL 4 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — The National Forum, previously seen as one of the government’s most loyal junior partners, quit the Georgian Dream-led governing coalition, dealing a major blow to the coalition’s hopes of retaining a majority at a parliamentary election later this year.

The Georgian Dream coalition now has a thin majority in parliament, holding 82 seats out of a total of 150. The National Forum has six MPs. Its decision to quit government came only a few days after the Republican party, also part of the coalition government, said that it would campaign on a separate slate at the parliamentary election.

Korneli Kakachia, director of the local non-partisan think tank the Georgian Institute of Politics, said that recent government policies by the Georgian Dream party had irritated its junior partners.

“This is pretty damaging to the Georgian Dream, as the National Forum were very loyal partners. Their announcement will raise questions with the voters,” he said. “The other parties are still in the coalition, but their support for new laws is not assured. Especially not the recently proposed bill by Georgian Dream to allow the PM to stay in office and run for MP at the same time.”

Under the current legislation, the PM can’t run for election as an MP. The Georgian Dream, though, want to change this as they want current PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili to head their party list.

But splits in the coalition has impacted its popularity with voters. Luka, 32, leaned against his BMW taxi. “If they can’t even keep their coalition together, how can they rule a country?” he said.

Standing next to him, 58-year-old Giorgi nodded his head in agreement. “I voted for them in the last election, but I’m not sure I’ll give them my vote in October,” he said.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Kyrgyzstan expropriates resorts

APRIL 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kyrgyz government signed a decree to retake possession of four Uzbek-owned resorts near Lake Issyk-Kul. Buston, Rokhat, Dilorom, and Golden Sands are all owned by Uzbek entities, both public and private. These are Soviet- era vacation resorts that had been built in the 1960s. Tensions have been running high between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan since ethnic fighting in Osh in 2010.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

 

Ex-Georgian PM buys a giant tree and sails if down the Black Sea coast

MARCH 24 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Bidzina Ivanishvili is known in Georgia through his many different guises. He is a former PM and the de facto leader of the Georgian Dream ruling coalition. He is a billionaire and the country’s richest man. He collects fine art, such as Picasso’s, and keeps a personal zoo of exotic animals, such as penguins, zebras and sharks.

Now, courting more headlines and controversy, can be added the title of tree lover, or tree thief, depending on your point of view.

Pictures from Georgia showed workmen digging up and then moving by barge a 135-year-old tulip tree, the height of a 12-storey build- ing, 30km along the Black Sea coast to Mr Ivanishvili’s garden at one of his homes.

This prompted a barrage of outrage on social media across Georgia as well as from tree experts who questioned whether the tree would survive.

German forestry expert Walter Benneckendorf said the tree would die. “Theoretically it is possible to replant even older trees, but only if it would have been replanted every five years, so the roots are used to it,” he told the Conway Bulletin. “Replanting a 135-year-old tree without the previous measure will result without a question in the tree’s death.”

Activists also said there were only a few dozen tulip trees left in Georgia.

Still in televised remarks, Mr Ivanishvili said that he paid for the tree legally.

“Giant trees are my hobby. I am developing a park where I think it is appropriate,” he said without a trace of irony.

Either way, people on the Black Sea coast were, for a day, treated to the sight of an upright tree apparently sailing serenely along Georgia’s shoreline.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

 

Georgian election splits coalition

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Republican Party, which is part of the government coalition with the ruling Georgian Dream party, said it will run independently at parliamentary elections scheduled for October. PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili said this does not mean that Republican Party deputies will now have to withdraw support for the coalition or that its ministers will have to leave the government.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

 

Kyrgyz President wins votes

MARCH 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The ruling Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan won three of the six major cities that held local elections, cementing its authority other regional cities that had previously been considered staunchly pro-opposition. The SDPK won in Osh, Tokmok and Kemin, three important regional cities in Kyrgyzstan.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

 

Presidential Office empties the most famous store in Tajikistan

MARCH 28 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — The tops floors of the most prominent department store in Tajkiistan’s capital, the Soviet-era TSUM, are eerily quiet.

Most of the traders who sold mobile phones, clothes and Tajik national mementos to foreign tourists have quit their leases. They said the Presidential Administration took over the company that owned the store earlier this year and has forced up rent.

Aziz, a 26-year-old man who sold Tajik-themed gifts, told The Conway Bulletin’s Dushanbe correspondent that rent used to be around $7 per square metre.

“Now they want us to pay more than $20 per square meter,” Aziz said, the anger clearly audible in his voice.

He shook his head, more to himself than to anybody else, and continued to pack up his products into boxes scattered across the floor. Like most of the other small traders he was quitting TSUM.

“I am moving out because I cannot pay the rent. Trade is not good in TSUM, not so many people come nowadays,” he said.

Traders said that a month ago, President Emomali Rakhmon’s Executive Office, which is headed by his daughter Ozoda Rakhmon, took control of the company that ran TSUM. The Investment and State Property Control Committee said that TSUM was privatised illegally in the 1990s. Officially, TSUM has now been re-nationalised although critics of Mr Rakhmon have said that it is now effectively under the control of his family.

Built in 1960’s, TSUM is one of the few remaining Soviet-built buildings in Dushanbe and had been one of the most popular trading centres. But Tajikistan is hurting from a sharp economic downturn. The Bulletin’s correspondent said that while bigger shops selling various Western brands were still operating on the ground floor of TSUM, the first and second floors were almost entirely empty.

Mr Rakhmon’s Presidential Administration has not commented on allegations that it has inflated rent at TSUM but the accusations will bolster critics who accuse the president of corruption.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

 

Kyrgyz civil society advocates push for greater influence

MARCH 29/30 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Around 250 delegates from Kyrgyzstan’s civil society gathered in the conference centre of a Bishkek hotel to discuss, argue and chew over just how they can play a more prominent role in holding the authorities to account and influencing the country’s development.

Organisers have hailed the meeting as groundbreaking for Central Asia which since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 has been driven by top-down decision-making. Civil society is able to influence events at a very local level in Kyrgyzstan but higher up, except perhaps through the ballot box and through revolutions, little is possible.

Rita Karasartova, Director of the Institute of Social Analysis, and one of the organisers of the forum dubbed ‘I Care’, said that the movement had taken momentum and inspiration from a conference organised last year to discuss potential changes to the Kyrgyz constitution.

“We were concerned about possible big risks of this proposal, and we wanted to speak up about them in front of the Government on the central square,” she told a Conway Bulletin correspondent. “Despite some parliamentary factions accusing us of preparing coup d’état, our protests were fruitful because the President cancelled the proposed constitutional changes.”

At the ‘I Care’ meeting judicial reforms, MPs pay and the failure of governments to deliver on election promises were hot topics — a reflection of how free Kyrgyzstan’s society is compared to the rest of the region.

Some, though, were sceptical of the reasons for the conference.

Anastasia, 23, a student in Bishkek, said: “Such forums do not happen just by themselves. There must be foreign supporters that promote them to have such activities.”

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)