On 28 June 2024, parliamentary elections were held in Mongolia. My service in 2024 as an international observer brought back memories of my first visit there in 2006 with the UN, to help celebrate ““800 years of Mongolian statehood”. I was back for the 2016 parliamentary elections and the 2017 presidential election. In the previous elections, there was a kind of veil of secrecy from the Election Commission of MongoliaPolitical party leaders were reluctant to speak to international observers. Yet this year, the entire electoral system was open to observation. Every polling, counting, and tabulation station was monitored by surveillance cameras under police supervision. Police also photographed key stages of the process, such as the opening of ballot boxes. Technically, in violation of best practice, police were omnipresent in polling stations, but we saw no evidence that voters found this intimidating. As I will point out later, no party refused to speak to us freely.
Modern Mongolia prides itself on its geopolitical independence, its respect for democracy and the rule of law, even if its strategic autonomy is compromised by its dependence on the Chinese and Russian markets. Moreover, the country ranks at the bottom of all the measures we use in international relations to measure public freedom and political transparency. At the same time, the country is also a strategic partner of the West and is cultivated by both the US and the EU, all the more so given the current political difficulties that make this great country a much better potential friend than the other way around.
Having gained independence from the Qing dynasty in 1911, Mongolia was briefly a theocracy before the Mongolian Revolution of 1921 sealed its fate within the Soviet Union’s sphere of interest. Brutal Soviet purges in the 1920s and Stalinist collectivization produced a repressive indigenous dictatorship under communist rule. Khorloogiin Choibalsan – replaced by his carefully chosen successor, Yumjaagiin Tsedenbalwho served until 1984. Throughout this period, the country remained formally outside the Kremlin, but Soviet influence is still evident in the Soviet colonialist architecture of military repression and the crumbling military barracks scattered throughout the country. These themes play out in Classic Mongolian Cinema as An unforgettable autumn (1977), Uuliin’s Tumor (2004), Wolf Pack Sarag Chono (1939), and Words from the heart (2003.) His modern politics avoid that crucial cinematic mix of assertive independence and socialist nostalgia.
Mongolia adopted a new democratic constitution in 1992. Its first parliamentary elections were won by the former communist Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party in 1992. In the early 1990s, further political reforms and economic “shock therapy” promoted a neoliberal path with IMF support. Modern Mongolia is now a semi-presidential republic with directly elected prime ministers and presidents. It benefits from a mixed electoral system of majoritarian and proportional systems with important reforms also protecting women’s rights and parliamentary representation. So how, in 2024, with these recent elections, might we chart Mongolia’s future? In short, much remains to be done if this vast country (far larger than the total area of Europe) is to achieve the democratic credentials it claims to seek.
Just before the election, I spoke to the office of the spokesperson for the current Prime Minister, who is also the President of the Mongolian People’s Party:
We hope for a new democratic future for the Mongolian people and that we will leave behind all past mistakes of corruption. The new MPP emphasizes “people first” and party interests second. We want the Mongolian people to proudly join us in a new era of respect for the individual and real economic prosperity for all Mongolians.
Oddly enough, that is almost exactly what I was told by President Battuulga’s office. The president is part of the rival group Democratic Partya centre-right organ dating back to the Democratic Revolution of the late 1980s.
We cannot afford to disappoint the people again. These elections are an unprecedented opportunity for Mongolia to take its rightful place in the global democratic community. We have shown how these advances can be fostered by promoting the rights of women, labor, and children, and by protecting minorities. These elections offer us the opportunity to do more to make all of these aspirations a reality for modern Mongolians.
THE HUN PartyMongolia’s third major party, which is running in the 2024 elections, has been a bit more cautious, perhaps reflecting its center-right leanings. A spokesman for the party’s chairman, Dorjkhand, said the Mongolian people needed to be more realistic about what the economy could afford:
We have seen the MPP, the Democratic Party and a host of others pledge to do everything from roads to welfare for herders… but none of them have even remotely addressed the crucial question of how we are going to fund empty campaign promises. In fact, they are as far from offering a solution to Mongolia’s needs as the stupidest environmentalist greens… Nor do they see that at the end of the day, we have two big markets: China and the Russian Federation. Tell a small herder that he has to employ a disabled woman just to get a grant from the EU or the US embassy, and I will show you a business that will simply disappear. No amount of fancy Democratic subsidies are going to put goats on the herder’s table. The truth is, we have two big markets and they are paying us. Tell any rancher to expect a hundred completed forms to Washington or Brussels and he’ll tell you he’d rather give a few more to the mining companies and get through the winter.
A spokesperson for the Mongolian Green Vegetables was also pessimistic, saying: “We know that our time is still far away… but will the Mongolian steppe wait?” National Alliance Party leader Mr Purevdavaa was also keen to emphasise his party’s green credentials. New United Coalitionthe party’s youngest party, has placed environmental and women’s issues among its main concerns. All this suggests the gradual emergence of a political diversity that was previously absent.
On the electoral front, I would say that election administration has improved considerably, and while corruption has never disappeared from the Mongolian media, the new electoral governance arrangements appear transparent. There is a deep divide between rural residents who vote in traditional dress and sometimes while grooming their pets, and the Central Election Commission’s highly sophisticated computerized scanning system for capturing and digesting the results. The litmus test of the perceived probity of the polls is usually the level of complaints from party observers, and to be frank, these have been fairly mild. The results have been pretty much as expected, and the entire process has been open to local and international observation and has appeared transparent at every stage.
The other parties contesting the 2024 elections were: Republican Party, United Citizen Participation Party and New United Coalition. All of these parties were formed through coalitions or mergers, making their titles less self-explanatory than one might think. According to preliminary results, the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP) received 35 percent of the vote and won 68 of the 126 seats. The main opposition Democratic Party took 42. The small anti-corruption HUN party won eight. Turnout was 69.3 percent nationwide, the Election Commission confirmed. Suggesting a glimmer of hope for future plurality, there were small successes for almost all of the smaller parties.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Mongolian politics is systematically played out as a struggle between the traditionalism of the MPP, heir to the “era of the comrades”, and the forces of falsely more progressive modernism carried by the Democratic Party. The conquest of eight seats by the HUN party is proof of a future “third way”. The political similarities between the major parties remain evident, suggesting that personality politics may be more crucial in Mongolian elections than history or ideology. This author has become accustomed to viewing Mongolian events as a constant replay of the country’s famous filmography, with recurring themes such as people’s rights, herders’ livelihoods, encroachment of mining interests, and the conflict between urbanity and the traditional steppe. The greater voice of women, ecology, the environment, and other issues in these elections was evident, but did not have much numerical impact on the final outcome. final results.
With a reduced majority, the MPP must effectively balance power with its rivals. How this will play out remains to be seen. This particular episode in Mongolia’s bizarre political cinematography ended with the confirmation of the de facto composition of real power. HUN is crystallizing as a potential rival of the future, and elsewhere there is a modicum of diversification in the achievements of women’s parties, environmentalists, and other special interest groups. It is also likely that a future type of coalition government between the MPP, the DP and (in the future perhaps also) the HUN, which sounds the death knell for the supremacy of the MPP after independence.
Mongolian politics remains an echo of classic films, where the major parties appear as heroes in a happy ending. Even more worrying, these elections do little to resolve the most worrying reality: Mongolia remains economically dependent on Russia and China. As in Mongolian filmography, one senses the French truism that “everything changes, everything stays the same.”
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