OCT. 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities paid a journalist working for the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty $30,000 in compensation after they admitted that police officers had beaten him in 2008. Agil Khalil was beaten by policemen when he tried to take photos in Baku.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan built a supersized glass and aluminium yurt to celebrate the city of Mary’s position as 2015 Culture and Arts Capital of the Turkic World, media reported. The yurt, which can hold up to 3,000 people, drew criticism. Central Asian governments are given to grandiose projects, projecting an image of being out-of-touch.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – As expected, the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan party won parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, securing President Ilham Aliyev’s control over the legislative assembly.
Azerbaijan’s Central Election Committee said that Yeni Azerbaijan had won 69 seats in the 125-seat parliament, slightly lower than five years ago. Independent MPs, who are in reality loyal to Mr Aliyev, won most of the other seats, giving him near total control.
Mr Aliyev said that the result reflected the will of Azerbaijan’s people and gave him a mandate for change.
“The factors, hindering the development of the country, as well as corruption cases should be eliminated. There is a strong political will and public support for achieving it,” he told media after the election.
The West had criticised Azerbaijan for cracking down on civil liberties and in the run-up to the election its main vote monitoring watchdog, the OSCE’s ODHIR, pulled out of covering the election after a row with the Azerbaijani authorities over the number of monitors it was allowed.
Tension has grown this year between the West and Azerbaijan. After the election result the US said: “We continue to have concerns about the restrictive political environment in Azerbaijan and urge the Government of Azerbaijan to respect the freedoms of peaceful assembly, association, and independent voices including the media.”
Russia, by contrast, praised the election as free and fair. European vote monitors have never said an election in Azerbaijan was free or fair.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
OCT. 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Tajik authorities asked media to refrain from reporting on the now banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). According to officials, the IRPT had planned to overthrow the Tajik government before its leaders were arrested in September. They have said foreign media has been duped into painting them as victims of repression.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Corruption is still rife in Uzbekistan despite the introduction of the country’s first anti-corruption plan earlier this year and a so called anti-corruption coordination commission, the OECD said in a new report.
In its report, the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said that Uzbekistan needs to criminalise corruption and promote public sector honesty and integrity.
Corruption and bribery are considered deeply embedded in Uzbekistan. The OECD, an intergovernmental organisation, report is evidence that little has changed despite some headline policies.
In effect, the OECD, said that Uzbekistan’s new laws were window dressing.
In its exhaustive 116 page report, the OECD said that Uzbekistan needed to focus on a handful of key policies if it was committed to beating corruption.
These involved conducting anti- corruption surveys regularly and publishing the results; improving the independence and integrity of the law enforcement agencies; developing e- government tools.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh Senate passed a bill that will regulate financing for NGOs, a move criticised by the West as cutting back on civil liberties. The new bill is similar to a law passed in Russia and limits NGOs’ access to funding from overseas.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament reappointed Temir Sariyev as the country’s PM, one month after an election won by President Almazbek Atamabayev’s Social Democrats. Mr Sariyev will head the coalition government. He has been PM since May 2015.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Campaigning has started ahead of a referendum on Dec. 6 on the Armenian constitution. The referendum debate focuses on whether to increase the powers of Parliament and the PM over the President. Opposition groups say Pres. Serzh Sargsyan wants to give himself more power once he leaves the presidency in 2018.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked Kairat Kelimbetov as head of the Central Bank, two years after he was handed the job.
He promoted 39-year-old Daniyar Akishev, a former deputy head of the Central Bank and his personal economic adviser, to take over from Mr Kelimbetov.
Under Mr Kelimbetov’s watch a combination of low oil prices and a recession in Russia has battered Kazakhstan’s economy. The tenge currency has lost around half its value since Feb. 2014.
Mr Nazarbayev said that he had lost confidence in Mr Kelimbetov. “The lack of confidence in the economy and the national currency — the tenge — should not be allowed to continue,” he said in a statement on his website. “It’s important to work to fix this poor performance.”
The Kazakh Central Bank has lost credibility over the past couple of years. It has flip-flopped on monetary policy and has spent billions of US dollars propping up its currency before defaulting first in Feb. 2014 and then in August this year.
On each occasion, events have appeared to wrong-foot Mr Kelimbetov.
In 2014, he admitted at a press conference after the devaluation that he hadn’t expected it to happen. In August he said that the tenge had moved to a free float against the US dollar before presiding over several more interventions to prop up its strength.
But news that he had been sacked failed to halt the slide in the value of the tenge. By Friday, Nov. 6, it had touched an all-time low against the US dollar of 310/$1.
Inflation data for October presented Mr Nazarbayev and his advisers with more bad news. Pushed up by the devaluation in August, inflation for the year to end-October measured over 9%.
And the disorganisation surrounding the Central Bank also appeared to continue. Shortly after it released a statement saying it would no longer spend millions of US dollars propping up the tenge, the Central Bank cancelled its monthly interest rate meeting without giving a reason or setting a new date.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Azerbaijan was due to start considering an appeal by jailed human rights activists Leyla Yunus and Arif Yunus against their imprisonment in August for 8-1/2 and 7 years for various economic crimes. Human rights groups have said the authorities imprisoned Leyla and Arif Yunus to silence them.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)