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09/09/2010

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09/9/2010

News/ POLITICAL NEWS

Political news

by 2007-05-19

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2007-05-19

KAZAKH DEPUTIES APPROVE UNLIMITED TERMS FOR NAZARBAEV [10:02:00]

The Kazakh parliament has voted overwhelmingly to change the constitution to allow President Nursultan Nazarbaev to serve for an unlimited number of terms. A joint session of both houses of parliament approved the change today to exempt the country’s first president from a bar on holding the post for more than two terms in a row. The change was introduced into proposed legislation that Nazarbaev said this week would strengthen parliament’s powers at the expense of those of the president. Nazarbaev touted those changes as an effort to liberalize his post-Soviet republic’s political landscape. Backers argue that the reforms will provide stability in potentially volatile times. "I don’t think [constitutional changes are being made] in [Nazarbaev’s] interests, but rather in the interests of the state -- because we’re heading toward difficult times. And we shouldn’t yield to euphoria, because the country is going to see problems among political parties as well as ethnic groups increase as parliament is given such [additional] powers," Amangeldy Aitaly told journalists after today’s vote. "Therefore we will need a wise leader with a great deal of experience." The package of reforms included a proposal to cut the presidential term from seven to five years as of 2012, when Nazarbaev’s current, second term expires. He has ruled the country since 1989. "A group of [parliament] deputies...proposed adding the following words to Paragraph 5 of Article 42 of the constitution: ’This norm does not apply to the first president of the Republic of Kazakhstan,’" upper house lawmaker Ermek Zhumabaev said. "Considering the first president’s historic role in the formation of our state, as one of the founders of a new, independent Kazakhstan, as well as the need to complete the initiated political and economic reforms, the joint commission accepted this proposal." The legislation now goes to Nazarbaev for signing.

RUSSIA: FEW ACHIEVEMENTS IN SUBDUED SUMMIT [10:02:00]

A summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and top EU officials in the Volga River city of Samara has concluded with only a handful of agreements on improving economic cooperation. Putin, playing the gracious host, opened today’s meeting by welcoming the chance for open dialogue between Moscow and Brussels. By the afternoon press conference, however, his tone had grown more critical. "We discussed the extremely important subject of the violation of the rights of the Russian-speaking population in Latvia and Estonia," Putin said. "Our position is well known and we reiterated it at the meeting today. We consider it unacceptable and unworthy of Europe." The Russian president’s remark follows weeks of controversy over EU member Estonia’s decision to relocate a Soviet-era monument from a central street in the capital Tallinn. The decision sparked mass rallies in Estonia, during which an ethnic Russian was killed. Putin today called on those responsible to be brought to justice. Estonia is just one of the new EU member states to antagonize Russia ahead of the summit. Poland, for its part, has blocked talks on a Russian-EU strategic partnership agreement in response to a ban imposed by Moscow on Polish meat imports. Dim Hopes From Start Those disputes, as well as continued disagreements over the future status of Kosovo and energy security, lowered expectations for today’s summit meeting between Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and other EU officials. Chancellor Merkel, representing the current EU presidency, said she hoped Russia would resolve its differences with individual EU states and move ahead with a strategic partnership with Brussels. "I want to emphasize once more that, naturally, we are interested in negotiating a new partnership agreement," Merkel said. "We have discussed various issues here about several member states that fall under the [EU’s] responsibility that have yet to be solved and on which we need to continue working." The two sides did agree on concrete economic cooperation measures such as simplifying border controls and exploring ways to facilitate investments. More generally, they vowed to continue constructive dialogue despite continued differences. Barroso praised the talks as "open" and "honest." "It was important to have this summit. There were very open, very frank, very honest exchanges," he said. "We could see the progress that we have been achieving in many areas, namely, [that] the overall economic, trade, an investment relation is developing well." Opposition Leaders Detained Some observers focused not on the summit, but the sidelines, where some 200 opposition activists gathered for a March of Dissent rally. The rally was officially sanctioned, but followed a week of crackdowns against activists in Samara and elsewhere. Former chess champion Garry Kasparov, now a leading figure in the Other Russia opposition movement, was detained this morning at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport as he was attempting to board a plane to Samara. Officials have claimed Kasparov’s ticket was improperly issued. Several Western journalists and other opposition figures were also barred from boarding the plane.

BATUMI: MAKING A BREAK FOR THE WEST [10:02:00]

In Batumi I arrange with Intourist, the former Soviet state travel agency that has since been privatized, to get a translator and guide to help me around town. They set me up with Anna, a 22-year-old blonde Russian whose family has lived in Batumi since her grandfather, an army officer, was posted here in 1949. I hadn’t asked for a Russian translator, but it’s appropriate. The new Georgian government that took power after the 2003 Rose Revolution is trying strongly to reorient itself away from Russia, its overlord for the past 130 years, and toward the West. Russian-backed separatists still bedevil Georgia in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. But here in the autonomous republic of Ajara, the new government has achieved an early, significant victory: The former strongman governor Aslan Abashidze, an ally of Russia, has been ousted and a pro-Western regional government is now in power. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. So together, an American and a Russian, we set out to explore the new Ajara. Anna has the cheekbones, lips and figure of a model. She also has a model’s skill for looking completely uninterested in whatever she is doing. She speaks Georgian, but prefers to translate our interviews in Russian. I ask if she’d taken part in the demonstrations in Batumi that helped bring down Abashidze. "It’s not for me," she says. "I feel like a guest here." She is still in college and says she doesn’t know what she’ll do when she graduates, though it’s hard to see her staying here too long. For 300 years Ajara was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, but Batumi was a backwater. Russia took control of Ajara in 1878, and quickly developed Batumi into a major center for its growing oil industry. Trains shipped oil from Baku to Batumi, where it was loaded on ships headed for Europe and the United States. One of the first oil pipelines in the world was built here, and by 1900 there were 13 foreign consulates in Batumi. That history was evident everywhere in Batumi, with its gracious two-story Russian colonial buildings, and the seaside pedestrian boulevard, built in 1884 and still much beloved by city residents. Batumi’s beauty had lately been hidden, though. During the Soviet period, tall concrete apartment blocks were built in the center amid decaying 19th century edifices. Under Abashidze’s rule, economic conditions grew increasingly dire v chronic electricity shortages meant the city was often completely dark at night, and a main movie theater and circus in the center were closed because they were close to Abashidze’s residence and he didn’t want people milling around his house. The new Ajaran government believes tourism is the key to its economic future, and one of its first moves was to make Batumi a pleasant place to visit. So, in less than three years, the city has received a thorough facelift. There are decorative floodlights on many of the center’s historic buildings, which have all been freshly painted. Apartment blocks have been painted bright red, blue and yellow, and their balconies covered with transparent colored plastic v visibly cheap, but more attractive than crumbling concrete. Five fountains have been built and two others reconstructed. A huge, brand new Ferris wheel looms over the city, waiting for the summer tourist season. "We have a lot of potential for tourism, but we have to give tourists something good to look at," said Lela Shanidze, a spokeswoman for Batumi City Hal. The city budget has more than doubled since the Abashidze era, and almost all of the increase v more than $12 million last year v has gone to the beautification program. And the program is not yet finished. Shanidze shows me a PowerPoint presentation of planned developments in the city, which include a "dolphinarium" and a residential complex with an indoor swimming pool. All of the streets in the center will be repaved as well, she said. Foreign investors are taking an interest in Ajara. Privatization has brought in a total of $50 million over the last four years, said Natela Tsiklashvili, the Ajaran minister of finance and economy. The largest single investment is an $18 million hotel project by a Kazakhstani company, the Silk Road Group. Partly as a result of all this, regional officials are projecting that up to 350,000 tourists will visit the area this year, up from 83,000 in 2004. Foreign tourists, especially from Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan are expected to fuel the increase. But the changes Batumi has seen are limited to a few dozen blocks in the center. Outside this privileged zone, the city continues to crumble. The roads have massive potholes, which collect the rain that falls steadily throughout my visit. One night I’m invited to dinner on the outskirts of the city at the house of Omar, a member of a professional Georgian dance group. First I visit the class he teaches to children learning traditional Georgian dance. Their parents pay about $9 a month for the classes, out of an average salary of about $90. Still, Omar estimates that 60 percent of Batumi’s children take these dance classes. After the class we buy some frozen Georgian khinkali dumplings (still delicious when frozen, I discover) and red wine in two-liter Pepsi bottles. Omar pays on credit. The street to his house isn’t lit at all, so we avoid the puddles using the lights on our cell phones. Still, inside it’s cozy and comfortable, and I get a taste of the hospitality of which Georgians are justly proud, even on the family’s limited means. With all of the male members of the family and two of Omar’s friends we toast me, our parents, our ancestors, babies who have been born recently, friends who weren’t there, loved ones who had died, my successful journey and my return to Georgia and Batumi one day. At midnight, when we walk to the main road to catch me a cab back to my hotel, Omar pays the taxi driver before I get in, and pays no attention to my protests. The next day I visit the Stalin Museum, amid a dirty row of building supplies shops. I take a quick tour of the museum, which commemorates the two months that Stalin spent in Batumi as a 21-year-old organizing the city’s fractious Marxists into a potent political force. The museum is in the small boarding house where Stalin stayed; his bed and, improbably, his towel are on display. The guide, Alexander Chkhaidze, tells me that Stalin was arrested six times but escaped from prison five of those times, and I wonder how history might have turned out differently had czarist Russia’s prison security been tighter. Then Alexander and I go to his office to talk about Stalin’s legacy and modern-day Georgia. The room is so cold I can see my breath, and Alexander wears a black wool overcoat buttoned to the top, plus a scarf and an Adidas stocking cap. He says most people’s lives haven’t improved much since the new government took over. "In Tbilisi and in Batumi people live well. Everywhere else people are so poor," he said. At least his job wasn’t hard: I had been the only visitor that day, and he showed me the guest registry and there had been a 20-day period in March when not a single person visited. One day, I visited the Adlia base on the southern edge of Batumi. This used to be the home of the Batumi battalion, a cohort of about 400 men loyal to Abashidze and commanded by a retired Russian general. These forces gained local notoriety when they blew up bridges connecting Ajara to the rest of Georgia in the last days of Abashidze’s rule; most have since been integrated into regular Georgian army units. The base is now the home of the Georgian 2nd Light Infantry Battalion. The unit’s commander, Capt. Merab Kikabidze, greeted me with a bristly kiss on the cheek v I had met him in a restaurant the night before, so now we were friends. I knew he spoke good English, so I left Anna the translator behind. Kikabidze had sharp features and closely cropped hair. He wore a uniform virtually identical to those worn by American soldiers, and perched on top of his head are the Wiley-X brand sunglasses overwhelmingly preferred by American GIs. The soldiers of his battalion marched crisply around the base’s grounds, chanting in Georgian. We walked into his whitewashed headquarters building surrounded by palm trees, and a little yellow dog followed us inside. I asked if his unit had participated in any joint training with units from other armies. These exercises are the bread-and-butter of military cooperation, done by countries who might expect to fight together in the future. "Not yet, unfortunately. But in the future we will, with an American brigade," he says. Is he open to military cooperation with Russia again in the future? "No, never." As we conversed, a French warship was lying at anchor in Batumi’s harbor, and a US Navy officer was in town to arrange a port call for an American ship the following week. Ajara, it is clear, is now firmly in the grip of the West. Editor-s Note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC,-based freelance writer who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East.

ARMENIAN OPPOSITION PINS HOPES ON PARTNERSHIP [10:01:00]

"The fate of Armenia depends on one person, and this one person is you," read sheets of paper pasted on the base of a monument in Yerevan’s Freedom Square. But as Armenia’s opposition pushes ahead with plans to contest the May 12 parliamentary vote results, emphasis is increasingly being put on the need for joint action. Turnout, however, was low at a May 18 pan-opposition rally to protest alleged election result falsification; the numbers of attendees were smaller than at an initial demonstration held immediately following election day. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Ironically, though, the demonstration marked one of the few times during the 2007 election season that Armenia’s scattered opposition has managed to combine forces. Members from the two opposition parties that gained seats in parliament -- Orinats Yerkir (Country of Law) and Heritage -- joined the more hardline Republic Party-New Times Party-Impeachment bloc alliance in the square. The People’s Party of Armenia, led by former presidential candidate Stepan Demirchian, also took part. Observers have said the failure to form such a coalition for the May 12 parliamentary vote partly explains the opposition’s weak showing in the new National Assembly. That history of discord could put long odds on the parties’ ability to now join together to contest the election results. The one point on which most opposition parties appear to agree is that the official preliminary election results, which handed pro-government parties complete control of the legislature, were rigged. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive]. At a May 16 press conference, Heritage Party leader Raffi Hovannisian claimed that his party had received not 80,000 votes (roughly 5.82 percent of the vote), but 250,000. "We all saw how after midnight [on May 13] that 250,000 was reduced to 80,000 through invalid ballots, miscounts and other means," Hovannisian claimed. "And when European observers declare progress, perhaps the progress is that 250,000 [votes] were not reduced to 25,000, but that 80,000 [of the actual votes] remained." [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Hovannisian added, however that the party’s "documented proof" of such falsification is by itself "insufficient." For that reason, he said, the party will share its findings with "our partners." Orinats Yerkir Party leader Artur Baghdasarian, who recently announced his intention to run for president in 2008, is one of those partners. Baghdasarian’s party won 6.85 percent of the vote, based on official results. In an appeal to "all political forces of Armenia that have concrete evidence about electoral fraud and can provide it to us," Baghdasarian announced plans on May 16 to contest those results before the Constitutional Court. The onetime parliamentary speaker claimed that results in some 400 polling stations nationwide were falsified. "How is it possible that the party [Orinats Yerkir] gets 70-150 votes in one village, and no vote in the neighboring one?" he asked reporters. "It’s impossible. Simply people were intimidated. Our proxies left the polling stations half way through the elections. They phoned me personally and said: "Mr. Baghdasarian, we are abandoning the polling station . . . because we will still have to live in this village." Nonetheless, although both opposition parties claim the election results are inaccurate -- Heritage Party’s Hovannisian calling the election process unbecoming not only to Armenians, but to "humans in general" -- neither has indicated it will give up its seats in parliament. Orinats Yerkir has termed boycotting parliament an incorrect way of struggling against the government; an earlier opposition boycott in 2004 proved glaringly unsuccessful. Hovannisian, the US-born Heritage Party leader and a former foreign minister, stated that his party is keeping its options open -- for now. "Everything is possible under this sun, especially in Armenia, but we are ready to do our work both in parliament and outside it, using all possibilities, rights and powers given to us," he said. Some opposition members have also taken up that declaration. As a prelude to the May 18 protest, Nikol Pashinian, an Impeachment bloc leader, staged a two-day round-the-clock sit-in in Liberty Square to protest the election results. Former world boxing champion Israyel Hakobkokhian, who ran for parliament as a non-partisan candidate, has declared a hunger strike. Government officials, however, have given little sign of noticing these actions. "People gave such big promises during the campaign period that now they have to explain their failure [to get into parliament] somehow," commented Parliament Speaker Tigran Torosian at Yerevan’s Tesaket (Viewpoint) Club, shrugging off organizers’ explanations for the May 18 rally. In response to the allegations of vote tampering, Central Election Commission spokesperson Tsovinar Khachatrian repeated earlier assurances that everything is "normal" with the vote count and results. Since May 12, she told EurasiaNet, the Commission has received only seven complaints about election results for both party lists and first-past-the-post races. Recounts have "been implemented, with no essential changes in the results," she said. Meanwhile, the opposition parties protesting in Liberty Square have scheduled their next demonstration for May 25. Editor-s Note: Marianna Grigoryan is a reporter for the independent online ArmeniaNow weekly in Yerevan.

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