FEB. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The opposition United National Movement (UNM) called for a rally in Tbilisi against the government on March 21. The UNM has said Georgia’s economy is on the verge of collapse and blames the government. The demonstration may attract large numbers and is a potential flashpoint.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -An autopsy found sedatives in the bloodstream of Rakhat Aliyev, former son-in-law of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was found hanged in his Vienna prison cell last month, Reuters reported quoting an Austrian prosecutor. Austrian officials said Aliyev killed himself. Austria has asked Switzerland for a second autopsy.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev called an early presidential election for April 26. Pro-Nazarbayev groups have been asking for an election in order to underline his authority as Kazakhstan deals with a tough economic climate.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s former PM and its richest and arguably most powerful man, accused Central Bank chief Giorgi Kadagidze of not doing enough to protect the country from the economic downturn enveloping the region.
Inflation is rising in Georgia, the lari currency is falling in value and businesses are worried. This has all heaped pressure on the 34-year-old Mr Kadagidze, who has been in the top job at the Central Bank since 2009.
Mr Ivanishvili’s intervention will pile on more pressure.
“The Governor of the NBG (National Bank of Georgia), Giorgi Kadagidze, who was appointed by the previous government, led us with his inactivity and incorrect actions to the lari crisis,” he said in a statement released through an NGO he has set up.
A fall in oil prices and economic turmoil in Russia have triggered inflation across Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
Some economic experts argue that Georgia’s Central Bank could have done more to dampen the inflation; others have said the government is merely looking for a scapegoat and that Mr Ivanishvili’s intervention is destabilising.
Vakhtang Charaia, director of the Center for Analysis and Forecast at Tbilisi State University, said: “Ivanishvili’s statement could lead to political instability, which in turn would negatively affect Georgia’s investment climate.”
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Various political organisations in Kazakhstan threw their support behind the prospect of an early presidential election, virtually ensuring the vote goes ahead in the next couple of months. Kazakh officials floated the idea earlier this month. They want President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s authority underlined.
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
>>Former son-in-law alleged to have committed suicide>>
FEB. 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rakhat Aliyev, an opponent and former son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, died in prison days before the end of a pre-trial hearing linked to the 2007 murders of two Kazakh bankers.
He was found hanged in the toilet, the only corner of his solitary cell without constant surveillance. The prison administration described his death as a suicide but Aliyev’s lawyer, Klaus Ainedter, cast immediate doubt on this explanation.
“I have significant doubts about this without wanting to blame anyone. I visited him yesterday. There could be no talk whatsoever of danger of suicide,” Mr Ainedter told the local press.
Aliyev had at one time been viewed as a potential successor to Mr Nazarbayev but he fell from grace in 2007 and was forced to flee Kazakhstan before the authorities could arrest him for the murder of the two bankers.
In exile, Aliyev, who had been married to Mr Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, set himself up as a vocal opponent of his former father-in-law from his bases in Malta and Vienna. He always denied any link to the bankers’ murders.
Last year, Aliyev turned himself in to the authorities in Vienna days before police planned to arrest him. The Austrian authorities had declined to deport Aliyev back to Kazakhstan but they had agreed to try him in Vienna for the murders.
Aliyev’s death rids Mr Nazarbayev of another major opponent. In 2013, French police arrested Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former Kazakh banker and minister, who was also a high profile opponent of Mr Nazarbayev.
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The opposition Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan accused the government of cracking down on its activities in the build-up to a parliamentary election on March 1. The party’s chairman, Muhiddin Kabiri, told the AFP news agency that the party was facing “total pressure”.
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank slashed the value of its manat currency by a third overnight, a sudden move that took businesses and ordinary Azerbaijanis by surprise.
Previously Azerbaijani officials had said that they would release the manat from its dollar peg, suggesting only a gradual devaluation to adjust to a sharp decline in the Russian rouble.
They have now justified the sudden devaluation by saying that they had little choice but to act in the face of a collapse in oil prices and economic turbulence in Russia.
“This decision was made in order to support diversification of Azerbaijan’s economy, strengthen its international compatibility and export potential as well as to provide balance of payments sustainability,” the Central Bank said in a statement.
On the streets of Azerbaijan’s towns, though, the devaluation was less generously viewed.
Veli, 29, a small business owner in Guba, a northern city, told a Bulletin correspondent that he was in shock.
“I believed the government. I kept my savings in the manat,” he said. “I lost third of my savings. It’s painful. It’s theft by the government.”
He said that he had no choice but to increase the price of the electronic goods he was selling in his shop — fuelling rising inflation.
Sahiba, a mother of two young children living in the city of Gazakh on the western border with Georgia echoed these sentiments. Her husband is a government official but has had his pay cut already this year.
“We’ve got a mortgage,” she said. “I don’t know what we’ll do.”
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan and the main opposition party’s leader, Gagik Tsarukyan, are embroiled in an increasingly bitter and acrimonious row.
Parliamentarians aligned to the Prosperous Armenia party walked out of the national assembly to protest against a government crackdown on Mr Tsarukyan.
They accuse Mr Sargsyan of launching a tax investigation on Mr Tsarukyan for purely vindictive reasons. The argument appears to have started at the beginning of the month with Mr Sargsyan describing the thick-set Mr Tsarukyan as “evil” after he accused the governing Republican Party of complicity in the abduction and beating of an Armenian civil rights protester.
In retaliation for ordering the tax investigation, Mr Tsarukyan called for demonstrations against the government on Feb 20.
The demonstrations didn’t materialise but the image of mainstream politics in Armenia has been tarnished.
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A limited OSCE election monitoring team arrived in Tashkent to observe Uzbekistan’s March 29 presidential election. The OSCE is Europe’s main democracy watchdog. It has monitored five elections in Uzbekistan since 1999, all of which it said lacked genuine competition and debate.
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)