Арабская весна дует на Кавказ
и в Среднюю Азию заявил на конференции в Стамбуле Росс Вильсон бывшеий посол США В Турции.
Вот выдержка из его выступления касательно стран Южного Кавказа (для тех кому лень прочитать целиком здесь http://www.turkishpolicy.com/dosyalar/files/ross%20wilson.pdf,)
Like Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan has similarly benefitted from energy riches
and similarly suffered from authoritarianism, the cloistering of economic wealth
in a few, favored hands, and a weak culture of freedom. Poverty in the countryside
remains extensive. The conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh limits
the country’s economic potential, distorts its politics, and saps public morale. It
is difficult to see Azerbaijan -or Armenia- really succeeding as prosperous, stable,
secure and at least democratizing states until Nagorno-Karabakh is resolved.
President Ilham Aliyev succeeded his father, Heydar Aliyev, in an election after
the latter’s death in 2003. Succession at the top is not an obvious, immediate issue
- except in the important sense that elections in Azerbaijan have never been
judged free and fair. But a remarkable share of the top people under the president
date back to the Soviet period and/or were installed after Heydar Aliyev’s return to
power in 1994, a fact which poses problems of its own.
• Armenia faces the same problems of poverty, a difficult and corrupt business
climate, weak, but authoritarian governance, and the lack of a culture of
freedom. Political space seems constricted, if not violent. Armenia’s prospects
are compromised by the militarization and isolation that flow from the unresolved
Nagorno-Karabakh problem. Too many citizens are pessimistic about the future
of their country - and so have left it. Political transitions have all been dodgy. Independent
Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrossian, was essentially overthrown
by his prime minister, Karabakh leader Robert Kocharian, in 1998. While
Kocharian’s successor, Serzh Sarkisian, did gain the presidency through the ballot
box, his victory was tainted by allegations of irregularities and post-electoral violence.
• Georgia’s foreign policy and military failures with the Abkhaz, South Ossetians
and Russia constitute its big tar babies, all the more since the August 2008
war gave Tbilisi’s early-1990s de facto loss of territory at least a semi-permanent
character. (The reintegration of Adjara in the south was a more positive development.)
The Rose Revolution was welcomed in the West for good reasons, but one
thing it represented was a third consecutive transfer of power by means other
than the ballot box. An improved business climate and a strong campaign against
corruption hold promise for leading the country in better directions, but the Russia
problem and the state of Georgia’s interethnic problems remain deep, almost
impossible problems.
Я конечно не нейтив инглиш спикер, бат вроде о выборах я понял правильно :( , потому и послал участникам дискуссии. рад буду ошибаться