Page 6 - BNE_magazine_05_2020

6 I The Month That Was bne May 2020 Politics
Eastern Europe
The US administration has appointed a veteran diplomat as US ambassador to Belarus following a decade of half- frozen relations with the authoritarian Eastern European nation. President Donald Trump announced his intent to install Julie Fisher, of Tennessee, to be the ambassador in Belarus.
The Georgian authorities said the appointment of former Georgian President and ex-Odesa governor Mikheil Saakashvili to the post of Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for reforms would be viewed as an “unfriendly and unacceptable step from a strategic partner,” according
to Georgian ambassador to Ukraine Teimuraz Sharashenidze.
The Ukrainian government has
fired the well-respected reformer Maksym Nefyodov, the head of the State Customs Service of Ukraine, and his deputies. Nefyodov is a former investment banker and then served as the Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister before being given control of the Customs Service. He is credited with introducing the ProZorro electronic declaration system that has reduced corruption in the government.
Only 26% of Ukrainians back Parliament's vote for the law on the sale of land, while 60% are against the law's adoption, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS). But 46% of Ukrainians believe the government has effectively handled the coronavirus pandemic.
Central Europe
Incumbent Polish President Andrzej Duda is on course for a knock-
out victory in the first round of the presidential election scheduled for May 10, say two opinion polls. The decision to hold the vote has been controversial and is seen as favouring the incumbent.
Hungary slipped two notches to 89th out of 180 countries in the latest Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index. Media freedom was only worse in Bulgaria among EU states. Norway ranked first.
If Slovak presidential elections were held now most likely they would have been won by PM Robert Fico, according to Focus agency. Fico, who is also leader of the social democratic SMER-SD party that won the March 2012 general elections, would be backed by 30% of the votes, ahead of businessmen Andrej Kiska who would have taken 23% of the votes.
Southeast Europe
Hundreds of tourist companies and dozens of NGOs have demanded the resignation of Bulgaria’s Tourism Minister Nikolina Angelkova for her failure to draft an adequate policy for the sector that collapsed following the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Tourism is one of the main drivers of Bulgaria’s GDP but was the first to be badly hit by the crisis. 530 companies, 32 NGOs and 97 guides demanded Angelkova’s resignation in a letter sent to Prime Minister Boyko Borissov.
The European Parliament is to reportedly call for the creation of a "common economic space" between the EU and the six former Soviet republics of its Eastern Partnership programme – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – as part of a process of "gradual integration" into the bloc.
Eurasia
Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, with its
rabbit warren-like layout of corridors running more than 10 kilometres
(6.2 miles) in all, reopened on April 20 as part of Iran’s gradual lifting of restrictions brought in to address the country’s coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.
The Cotton Campaign coalition of human rights groups has said it would be premature to lift a longstanding global boycott of Uzbek cotton and textiles as called for by Tashkent. The government of Uzbekistan requested
the move to help the country deal with the economic impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has delivered 131,320 kg of food assistance to Uzbekistan, the US Embassy in Uzbekistan said on April 16. This food assistance will reach over 35,000 of the most vulnerable Uzbek citizens and will be distributed via more than 144 health and social protection facilities. That includes facilities that are providing coronavirus-related (COVID-19-related) quarantine services, long-term care
to patients with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (TB), orphanages and mental health facilities.
US major Chevron has closed the sale of its stake in the Azeri-Chirag- Gunashli (ACG) fields in Azerbaijan to Hungary’s MOL, fetching $1.57bn. The sale covers Chevron’s 9.57% interest in the BP-operated Caspian Sea project, which accounts for over 70% of Azerbaijan’s oil output, as well as in the Western Export Route pipeline that delivers its supplies to the Black Sea.
It also includes the company’s 8.9% stake in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that pumps ACG’s oil to the Mediterranean shore.
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