NOV. 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an unusually strongly worded intervention, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili warned parliamentarians the country faced a political crisis unless they pull together, media reported. Mr Margvelashvili’s statement was made in reference to the sacking of defence minister Irakli Alasania earlier this month.
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(News report from Issue No. 209, published on Nov.19 2014)
NOV. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Several hundred people protested against a crackdown by the authorities in Azerbaijan against the media, a rare protest in this increasingly heavily policed state.
A Bulletin correspondent said that the demonstration in Baku was good natured and had a festival-like atmosphere with flag waving, folk music and dancing.
Police tried to block reporters from speaking to demonstrators and from filming the march but they eventually relented.
Shakar Isgandarli was one of the demonstrators.
“I am a teacher of two political prisoners, Anar Mammadli and Bashir Suleymanli,” he said. “I taught them to fight against injustice. And they did. Now the Aliyev regime has jailed them for this”.
Europe and the United States have made increasingly harsh statements about the crackdown by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on the media but, seemingly, without much impact. Virtually every week, reports from Azerbaijan say that another anti-government activist has been imprisoned.
Mammadli and Suleymanli are two human rights lawyers who were imprisoned earlier this year for tax evasion and illegal business activities. They have said that these charges have been fabricated.
Protesters called for the resignation of Mr Aliyev and vowed to continue protests. The risk for Mr Aliyev is that although the police and prosecutors have been effective at imprisoning government critics, the arrests are stirring more anti-government feelings.
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(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – At least one of the thousands of inmates freed last week under a massive amnesty sanctioned by Tajikistan’s government to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the national constitution appears to have been let out too soon.
Tabur Gafurov, 31, killed his 55-year-old father during a heated argument after he returned to his family home in Sogd region, northern Tajikistan, reported Tajik outlet Asia Plus.
The incident has called into question Dushanbe’s decision to release so many prisoners at once, undermining what one regular observer of politics in the country says is an attempt by President Emomali Rakhmon to project his domestic political power.
“The amnesty is classic authoritarianism at work,” he said. “He wants the population to know that he can give freedom or take it away as he pleases,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia plans to re-establish its Interior Ministry ahead of joining the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union.
PM Hovik Abrahamian said that several ministries would be merged together to create an Interior Ministry, which was abandoned in 2002.
“Nineteen ministries is too many for Armenia,” the official Armenpress news agency quoted Mr Abrahamian as saying. “In the future we will turn the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Ministry of Local Government into the Ministry of Internal Affairs as it is the case in many European countries.”
In the former Soviet space the Interior Ministry is one of the more powerful government institutions. It has its own army and is tasked with imposing internal security and order. In 2002, Armenia disbanded the Interior Ministry and handed these pseudo military powers to the police force. This will now revert back to the Interior Ministry.
Armenia is joining the Eurasian Economic Union in the New Year, a group that already includes Belarus and Kazakhstan alongside Russia. Kyrgyzstan is also intending to join.
All these countries have a strong Interior Ministry. It’s likely that joining the Eurasian Economic Union and re-establishing the Interior Ministry in Armenia are linked.
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(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The fallout from the sacking of Georgian defence minister Irakli Alasania rumbled on. As predicted, Georgia’s foreign minister, Maia Panjikidze, and minister for European integration, Aleksi Petriashvili, both also resigned.
They belong to the same party as Mr Alasania, the Free Democrats. The party also withdrew its support for the Georgian Dream coalition, wiping out its majority in parliament.
Mr Alasania was officially sacked for insubordination after he criticised the arrest of ministry of defence officials for alleged corruption.
These sackings weaken the government of PM Irakli Garibashvili. They have also created a potentially dangerous political enemy in Mr Alasania. He was one of the most charismatic ministers and could drum up support to challenge the government.
For now, though, Mr Garibashvili and his patron, former PM and leader of the Georgian Dream coalition Bidzina Ivanishvili, were quick to deride Mr Alasania as an ambitious adventurer.
The coalition that Mr Ivanishvili created and that Mr Garibashvili leads had been built for one main purpose — to topple Mikheil Saakashvili from power. With that ambition achieved in parliamentary election in 2012 and presidential elections in 2013 it was always likely that the coalition was going to unravel. This unravelling is a natural re-balancing of Georgian politics.
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(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
NOV. 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s PM Irakli Garbishvili sacked his defence minister Irakli Alasania for insubordination, throwing the coalition government into its most severe test of credibility since winning power at a parliamentary election in 2012 and then a presidential election in 2013.
Mr Alasania is head of the Free Democrats party which could withdraw its support for the Georgian Dream, the opposition coalition put together by Georgia’s richest man Bidzine Ivanishvili to oust Mikheil Saakshvili from power.
Georgian foreign minister, Maia Panjikidze, and Aleksi Petriashvili, the minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, are also members of the Free Democrats and are likely to resign from the government.
Without the 10 Free Democrats MPs, Georgia Dream loses its majority in Georgia’s parliament. It drops its representation to 75 MPs, out of 150.
Reports from Tbilisi said Mr Alasania was furious about the arrest of 10 officials from the ministry of defence for alleged corruption. He countered that the officials were innocent and that the arrests were part of a plot to undermine his staunchly pro-NATO and pro-Western agenda. The current government is broadly pro-West too, although it has mended ties with Russia.
Mr Alasania was on a trip to Europe when the arrests took place. Despite a busy schedule he still found time to openly criticise the arrests. This was enough for his boss, Mr Garbishvili, probably with the support of Mr Ivanishvili, to fire him.
Mr Alasania is a popular politician. His sacking has shaken Georgian politics.
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(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)
OCT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Georgia sentenced former defence minister Bacho Akhalaia to 7-1/2 years in prison for abuse of power and torture.
Akhalaia is the most high-profile member of the former government of Mikheil Saakashvili to be sent to prison. The current government, headed by members of the Georgian Dream coalition, has said it has to pursue former ministers on various corruption and abuse charges although Mr Saakashvili and his allies have called the charges a witch hunt.
The European Union and the United States have both warned the current government of using its powers to pursue personal vendettas. The US repeated its warning after the imprisonment of Akhalaia.
“We continue to stress to the Georgian Government the importance of due process and rule of law and of conducting investigations with transparency to avoid even the perception that the judicial system is being used for political retribution,” a US State Department spokesman said.
The big risk for the Georgian government is that it is undermining the country’s positive image with the West.
Akhalaia was already held in pre-trial detention. His conviction dates back to the torture of four inmates in 2006 when he was head of the Georgian prison service. He was also a former interior minister.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked his defence minister Serik Akhmetov after only six months in the job and replaced him with the powerful mayor of Astana Imangali Tasmagambetov.
No official explanation was given for the sacking, although analysts were quick to come up with two theories.
The first is that Mr Akhmetov was linked to the former governor of the central Karaganda region, Baurzhan Abdishev, who has been tarnished by a corruption scandal. With Mr Nazarbayev pursuing an anti-corruption agenda, he may have wanted to purge his cabinet of potential problems.
The second theory is that with the Ukraine civil war rumbling on, Mr Nazarbayev wanted to ensure that his military was up to scratch. Mr Tasmagambetov is one of his most loyal lieutenants and appointing him as minister of defence will ensure that his orders are carried through effectively. Mr Tasmagambetov has previously been head of the presidential administration, prime minister and mayor of Almaty.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s main opposition parties, Respublika and Ata Zhurt, will join forces to form a coalition ahead of parliamentary elections in 2015, media reported. If it holds together, the Respublika- Ata Zhurt coalition could be powerful as it would bridge the country’s north-south divide.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s Council of Elders, a sort of perfunctory rubber-stamping chamber of deputies which confers some sort of plurality on President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s decisions, declared 2015 at the Year of Neutrality.
The declaration itself is fairly standard but it is important as a reminder that Turkmenistan follows a strictly neutral policy.
This means that while other countries in former Soviet Central Asia are becoming increasingly involved in the Russia-led Customs Union — Kazakhstan is already a member, Kyrgyzstan is on the brink of signing up and Tajikistan is eager — Turkmenistan won’t be joining them.
It also, according to the doctrine, will prevent Turkmenistan from taking sides over potential disputes over ownership of the Caspian Sea and its riches. This is important as tension between the Caspian Sea littoral states has been rising over the past few years.
And then there is also the small matter of the Taliban to consider. They have been increasing their activity around the borders of Central Asia recently, pressuring
Turkmenistan, even, into strengthening is border security.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)