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TASHKENT (TCA) — Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev is cultivating the cult of personality of late President Islam Karimov in order to consolidate his power and to bolster the legitimacy of his own rule. We are republishing this article on the issue, written by Joanna Lillis, originally published by Eurasianet: Continue reading
BISHKEK (TCA) — The state power succession is a relevant issue in Central Asian countries, but Turkmenistan, as well as Tajikistan, seems to have chosen a dynastic rule scheme. We are republishing this article on the issue, written by Annette Bohr*, originally published by Eurasianet: Dynastic rule is coming back into fashion in Central Asia. And the more consolidated the authoritarian regime, the more openly the grooming of a successor can take place. This maxim appears to be bearing itself out in both Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Preparing for a family member to take over the presidential throne can be fraught with risks, however. In the case of Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s former son-in-law, Rakhat Aliyev, was convicted of plotting to overthrow Nazarbayev’s government and died in prison in Vienna, while the daughter of the deceased president of Uzbekistan, Gulnara Karimova, remains under house arrest in Tashkent. Nonetheless, the need to secure the presidential legacy and wealth is paramount, and so the smart autocrat will attempt to hand-pick a successor, ideally a son or daughter on whose loyalty he can depend. In Tajikistan last year, President Emomali Rahmon appointed his 29-year-old son, Rustam Emomali, mayor of the capital. While Turkmenistan’s first president, Saparmurat Niyazov, was estranged from his family and his playboy son lived abroad, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s style of rule gives a more prominent position to family and other informal ties. His only known son, 36-year-old Serdar, has long been reported in unofficial media to have many prominent business connections and to be positioning himself within the country’s elite. But official media in Turkmenistan paid scant attention to Serdar until November 2016, when he became a parliamentary deputy in a by-election, marking the beginning of a rapidly ascending career path. After graduating from Turkmenistan’s agricultural university in 2001, Serdar completed two years of military service before working for five years in the country’s food industry as chief specialist for alcohol-free beer and wine. In 2008, he changed course to study diplomacy in Moscow and international security in Geneva. Since 2013 he has held several mid-level government positions in the oil and gas industry and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Somewhat ironically, Serdar chairs the parliamentary committee on legal affairs, although, as exiled opposition-run Gundogar news outlet has noted, his election to parliament stands in direct violation of the constitution. Article 120 of that document decrees that all candidates standing for election to the Mejlis must have spent the preceding 10 years living continuously inside Turkmenistan. In the run-up to parliamentary elections this March, speculation abounded that Serdar would be named the new head of parliament, given that the constitution designates the holder of that post as acting president in the event the head of state dies. In the event, Serdar was reelected to parliament, followed by his swift appointment to the post of deputy foreign minister on March 30. By and large, official posts in Turkmenistan are decorative, and constitutional stipulations regarding power transfers can be dealt with as...
BISHKEK (TCA) — It is now clear that “operation successor” designed by former President of Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambayev has failed, and that he may end up like some of his currently disgraced loyalists. We are republishing this article on the issue, originally published by Eurasianet: Over the six years in which he ran Kyrgyzstan, former President Almazbek Atambayev made enemies left and right, paying little heed for the consequences. Now that he is out of power, his often abrasive and arbitrary style of rule is returning to haunt him. Atambayev, 61, has had a torrid few months. Many allies installed by him in powerful government posts have been fired in a systematic purge waged by his successor-turned-foe. Some have been arrested. And now another scandal is looming. Since last week, lawmakers have begun demanding a renewed probe into the nebulous circumstances under which Kyrgyzstan planned in 2014 to rent out four military helicopters to Uganda’s armed forces. The person fanning the flames of the scandal was once fired by Atambayev and was later investigated on corruption charges. What is known so far is that Kyrgyzstan proposed to lease two MI-24Bs and two MI-8MTBs donated to it by Russia to Uganda for use in peacekeeping operations in Somalia. Deputies in parliament want to understand how the deal was hatched. The contract was reportedly signed by representatives of the Ugandan defense ministry and the state-owned Kyrgyzkural weapons enterprise in December 2014, but the public only learned about it many months afterward. Even then, the affair only came to light by virtue of a petition from then-Defense Minister Abdilla Kudaiberdiyev for prosecutors to investigate whether the deal was even legal. Under the terms of the agreement, lease payments were to be made to the Dubai-based bank accounts of a company called Sky Tech Trading Services FZE. It is unclear whether the Kyrgyz state would have been the ultimate beneficiary of the transaction. After Kudaiberdiyev made a stink, a government-appointed interdepartmental working group in September 2015 decreed that the helicopter lease indeed did “not correspond to the requirements of Kyrgyzstan’s existing legislation.” In other words, whoever pushed through the contract may have broken the law. And as chance would have it, a copy of the government decree on the lease, dated October 8, 2014, and bearing Atambayev’s signature has suddenly come to light, courtesy of RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz service, Radio Azattyk. Kudaiberdiyev clearly has an axe to grind. In October 2015, the helicopter affair having died down, he was fired by Atambayev. His dismissal came on the heels of prosecutor filing charges against him on suspicion of corrupt schemes within the ministry. He is now relishing the opportunity to get back. “To sign [a contract] between two states it was a requirement to get permission from the government of Kyrgyzstan. But that didn’t happen. [Atambayev] unilaterally broke the law and signed the agreement,” Kudaiberdiyev told Radio Azattyk last week. A particularly piquant aspect of this story is the notion that Atambayev might be seen as...
ASTANA (TCA) — The state power succession is a relevant issue in Kazakhstan, and the most recent developments show that the authorities have crafted a transition scheme. We are republishing this article on the issue, originally published by Eurasianet: The speaker of Kazakhstan’s parliament has dropped a political bombshell by stating in an interview that President Nursultan Nazarbayev may not run for re-election in 2020. “He is a very wise man, he is absolutely reasonable. And I think that in 2020 we shall have presidential elections with other candidates,” Tokayev told BBC’s Hard Talk program in an interview aired on June 20. Tokayev said he was expressing his own personal views in making the forecast, although it is unlikely such a senior official in Kazakhstan would issue the remarks without sanction from higher up. As speaker of the Senate, Tokayev is in formal terms only second in the hierarchy to Nazarbayev. The date of Nazarbayev’s departure from the top of Kazakhstan’s political pyramid has for years been object of sustained speculation and this may be the clearest indication to date that a definitive exit strategy has been crafted. There have been tentative signs in the recent past that a transition of sorts is in the offing. Early in 2017, Nazarbayev, who turns 78 on July 6, issued a televised declaration nebulously outlining his desire to formally dilute the powers of the president and shift toward a more parliamentary form of government. “The basic essence is that the president will give some of his powers to parliament and the government,” he said in a January 25, 2017, address televised on all national channels. “The proposed reform is a serious redistribution of power and a democratization of the political system as a whole.” As outlined by Nazarbayev, those reforms will give the executive more powers over running the economy, while the head of state retains control over defense and foreign policy. The head of the Constitutional Council, Kairat Mami, met with Nazarbayev earlier this week to debrief him on the progress being made toward overhauling the constitution, but few details were provided by the president’s office on the substance of the conversation. In the broader picture, the planned transition toward a highly consensual model of parliamentarianism indicates that Nazarbayev intends to be Kazakhstan’s first and last all-powerful head of state. Parliament is at present overwhelmingly dominated by Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party. A pair of officially sanctioned ersatz opposition parties have been allowed to occupy 14 out of the legislature’s 107 seats in the directly elected lower house of parliament. Genuinely confrontational political parties have been either sidelined into irrelevance through harassment and by being ignored by media almost entirely under the thumb of the government or banned altogether. Sensing the prospect of change at the top, some opposition activists are seeking to mobilize in order to seize the initiative in a post-Nazarbayev era, although it is unclear they possess the organizational nous or the public appeal to capitalize on the moment. Strong...
BISHKEK (TCA) — Kyrgyzstan’s former President Almazbek Atambayev on June 6 made a political statement after on June 5, the State Committee for National Security arrested former Prime Minister Sapar Isakov and former Mayor of Bishkek and former head of the State Customs Service, Kubanychbek Kulmatov, on corruption charges. "Yesterday's decision to take into custody the former prime minister of the Kyrgyz Republic, SDPK [Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan] deputy chairman, Sapar Isakov, and the former chairman of the State Customs Service, a member of the Political Council of our party, Kubanychbek Kulmatov, is not a fight against corruption,” Atambayev said in the statement, published by 24.kg news agency. “Contrary to common sense, the people who had distinguished themselves in the fight against corruption were arrested on corruption charges. The government of Sapar Isakov for 4 months of this year provided a budget surplus of 5 billion soms. This indicator was achieved for the first time in the history of independent Kyrgyzstan. And the key role here was played by the receipts from the customs bodies, which Sapar Isakov and Kubanychbek Kulmatov began to clear from corrupt officials." "I also officially declare that neither the then head of the presidential administration department, Sapar Isakov, nor Kubanychbek Kulmatov, when he was the mayor of Bishkek, were empowered to independently make the decisions that were the basis of the charges brought against them by the investigation. Despite their absurdity, I have so far refrained from public statements in order to enable law enforcement bodies to independently understand the matter. However, today I see that they were tasked with arrest of Isakov and Kulmatov under any pretext," Atambayev’s statement says. According to him, all the strategic decisions on the reconstruction of the Bishkek Heating and Power Plant at the expense of China’s credit, including the agreement to choose the contractor by the Chinese side, as well as the decision to redirect foreign grant funds for construction of a school in Kalys Ordo residential area were made by himself, Almazbek Atambayev, as the head of state and by the government after extensive discussions with the heads of relevant state bodies. "The key role of the president of the country in making such decisions is conditioned by the existing deficit of responsibility of state bodies and employees, the duties of the head of state in foreign policy, as well as the requirements for the implementation of the National Sustainable Development Strategy,” Atambayev said. Atambayev, who is also the SDPK leader, said that under the pretext of the fight against corruption, authorities have begun a witch hunt. Atambayev said that the current director of the anti-corruption service is pushing President Sooronbai Jeenbekov to a dangerous path. "SDPK intends to act solely within the framework of the law and the Constitution of the Kyrgyz Republic, to demand legitimacy, to appeal to public opinion, to uphold the rights and legitimate interests of our comrades," Atambayev concluded. The charge against Isakov stems from 2013, when he was implementing a project...
BISHKEK (TCA) — The recent developments in Kyrgyzstan have shown that the power succession scheme designed by former President Atambayev has proven to be his mistake. We are republishing this article on the issue, written by Nurjamal Djanibekova, originally published by Eurasianet: It was just half a year ago that Kyrgyzstan made history with its first peaceful handover of power from one elected president to another. Before ending his single permitted six-year term, Almazbek Atambayev looked around for a friendly successor to anoint. The choice fell on Sooronbai Jeenbekov, a long-time associate. His loyal then-prime minister would surely be a dependable and even a malleable head of state as he continued to operate in the background, he must have thought. After Jeenbekov made it through a scrappy election in one round in October, it all went sour. All thought of sharing power has gone straight out of the window. Since coming to office, Jeenbekov has fired all Atambayev’s top allies and prosecutors are now filing criminal cases against some of them. How it all began In the early days after the succession operation was successfully executed, Atambayev disappeared from the public eye. That interlude ended on March 31, when he embarked on a pugnacious return to the political arena at a congress of the ruling Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan, or SDPK. He had formally severed links to the party while president, as required by law. But as Atambayev made clear after being reappointed leader by the SDPK nomenklatura, his return had been prompted by unhappiness over how Jeenbekov had been running the shop. Atambayev grumbled in trademark manner about Jeenbekov’s criticism of anti-corruption reforms undertaken during his presidency. He then implied Jeenbekov was laying the grounds for clan rule by declining to pressure his brother, Asylbek, a former speaker of parliament and sitting MP, into giving up his seat. Asylbek Jeenbekov is actually also a high-ranking member of the SDPK, so it did not go unnoticed that he was not invited to the party congress. President Jeenbekov took the high road and disdained to respond publicly to Atambayev’s inferences. His answer came in the days and weeks that followed. From ally to opponent One by one, all Atambayev’s allies have been kicked out of office. On April 7, the deputy head of the State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, Bolot Suyumbayev, lost his job, becoming the first victim of a systematic purge. Next came GKNB chief Abdil Segizbayev. And then General Prosecutor Indira Joldubayeva. And then the head of the customs service Kubanychbek Kulmatov. And most dramatic of all, former Prime Minister Sapar Isakov. Isakov had to be squeezed out by a vote in parliament, which should on paper not have been easy. Atambayev’s SDPK, after all, holds the largest bloc in the 120-seat parliament, although more than 20 MPs short of an outright majority. All the same, several SDPK MPs turned on Isakov. It was the first time in Kyrgyzstan’s history that the prime minister lost his...
