AUG. 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The rebel Georgian region of Abkhazia voted in Raul Khajimba as its new president. Bucking expectations, Mr Khajimba won the vote in the first round, providing Abkhazia and Russia, its patron, with a show of unity. Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia in 2008. Georgia described the vote as illegal.
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(News report from Issue No. 197, published on Aug. 27 2014)
AUG. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Human rights groups have criticised former British PM Tony Blair for penning a letter in 2012 to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev giving him advice on how to refer in a speech to deadly clashes between police and anti- government demonstrators. Mr Blair has been an adviser to Mr Nazarbayev since 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 197, published on Aug. 27 2014)
SEPT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia has delayed by two years the roll out nationwide of juries in trials.
In 2010, Tbilisi became the first city in former Soviet Caucasus or Central Asia to allow jury verdicts in some trials. Initially, jury trials were limited to those in which both the prosecution and defence in murder cases agreed to it. The former Soviet Union has no legacy of jury trials and their introduction was considered a great modernising step by the administration of former President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Of course introducing jury trials suited Mr Saakashvili’s vision of where Georgia was heading. Mr Saakashvili was an arch-Western reformer. He saw Georgia’s future with the European Union, the United States and NATO. Introducing jury trials was another step in this direction.
The experiment was deemed a success and rolled out to courts in Georgia’s second city of Kutaisi. There have, reports said, been eight murder cases involving juries.
And lawmakers had put forward ambitious plans to push jury trials out across the country not only for murder cases but all crimes that involve a prison sentence from Oct. 1 2014. This has now been delayed.
Poor court infrastructure, a lack of understanding on how juries operate and the extra cost and time of running jury trials were the reasons behind the delay, the civil.ge new website reported quoted the Georgian ministry of justice as saying.
Still, the ambitious plan has only been delayed for two years, rather than scrapped altogether.
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(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
AUG. 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan jailed seven men for plotting to attack the TALCO aluminium plant in the west of the country. TALCO is Tajikistan’s biggest economic asset and any successful attack would cripple the Tajik economy. The court said the group wanted to overthrow the government.
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(News report from Issue No. 196, published on Aug. 20 2014)
AUG. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Cherie Blair, wife of ex-British PM Tony Blair, has negotiated a contract to advise Kazakhstan’s ministry of justice for three months for $200,000, the Daily Telegraph reported. Mr Blair has been an adviser to Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev since 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 196, published on Aug. 20 2014)
AUG.11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili responded to criticism from US senators that Georgia was unfairly prosecuting former president Mikheil Saakashvili for abuse of power by saying his prosecution would create a more equal society.The US, Georgia’s most important ally, has said charges against Mr Saakashvili are politically motivated.
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(News report from Issue No. 195, published on Aug. 13 2014)
AUG. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – This is the age of austerity and when money is tight, costs have to be trimmed.
That’s certainly the message Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev was sending out when he announced that he was merging several ministries.
“It is hard to understand, why one government body must be responsible for oil and gas, while another one deals with solid energy resources, the third department controls the power grid and the fourth one the nuclear industry,” Reuters quoted Mr Nazarbayev as saying. “This is why I believe it is time to concentrate the entire energy sector in the hands of one person.”
He appointed his ally Vladimir Shkolnik head of a new super Energy Ministry that merged the Oil and Gas Ministry, the Environmental Protection Ministry and the Ministry for Industry.
Kazakhstan’s economic growth has slowed due to sanctions on Russia over its interference in Ukraine and the failure of the giant Caspian Sea oil field Kashagan to start producing.
Mr Nazarbayev’s downsizing didn’t stop with the energy sector. He disbanded the Agency for Fighting Financial Crimes and gave its responsibilities to the Agency for Civil Affairs and also cut the Ministry for Emergencies, handing its duties to the Interior Ministry.
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(News report from Issue No. 195, published on Aug. 13 2014)
AUG. 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Georgia issued an arrest warrant for former president Mikheil Saakashvili on charges that he abused his power and illegally privatised state assets during his 10 years in power. Mr Saakashvili, who is living in Europe, has said the new Georgian government is using the law to settle vendettas.
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(News report from Issue No. 194, published on Aug. 6 2014)
DANGHARA/Tajikistan JULY 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — To passersby this town of 25,000 people south east of Dushanbe, is indistinguishable from any other poor Tajik settlement.
On one side of the drag running through its centre there is a crowded but limited bazaar, hawking cheap products from China. On the other, the standard array of grocery stores with little to sell and taxi drivers waiting for non-existent customers.
But Danghara is an important part of impoverished Tajikistan’s political vocabulary. The town’s most famous son, Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon, stuffs his government with people from Danghara and its eponymous district.
Making up only 1% of the total population of Tajikistan, Dangharans nevertheless head the ministries of education, health and internal affairs. The first Deputy Prime Minister is also Danghara-born.
“Half of Danghara has already moved to Dushanbe,” said Daler Khalidoev, a courier who lives in the capital but comes from Khujand. “They still smell of the village.”
Since Soviet times, regional divisions have plagued Tajikistan. Back then most of the local elite were plucked from Leninabad region (now Khojand) in the north, now it seems that Dangharans are in favour.
At Mr Rakhmon’s encouragement international organizations have built and equipped Danghara general hospital, one of the best in the country, at a cost of roughly $20m. The newly created Danghara Free Economic Zone 10km outside the city, will host strategic investments such as an Iranian detergent factory worth $1.4b and a Chinese oil refinery that will refine over 1m tonnes of crude per year.
“(It’s) jobs for his people,” said Khalidoev, the courier from Khojand.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia buried its former president Eduard Shevardnadze with full military honours at his residence outside Tbilisi. Shevardnadze had been the Soviet Union’s foreign minister under Mikhail Gorbachev. Former US Secretary of State James Baker and other high profile foreign dignitaries attended the ceremony.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)