On June 28, 2024, Mongolia held a parliamentary election. In 2024, my experience as an international observer reminded me of the first time I celebrated the “800th anniversary of Mongolia” with the United Nations in 2006. I came back again for the 2016 congressional elections and the 2017 presidential election. Mongolia’s electoral commission has maintained secrecy over past elections, with party leaders reluctant to speak to international observers. This year, however, the entire electoral body is under observation. Every voting, counting and tabulation location is under CCTV surveillance under police supervision. Police also filmed key stages of the process, including the opening of the ballot box. Technically, the ubiquitous presence of police at polling stations violates best practices, but we have seen no evidence that voters find this approach intimidating. As I will note below, no party has refused to speak freely to us.
Modern Mongolia prides itself on its geopolitical independence and respect for democracy and the rule of law, although its strategic autonomy is compromised by its dependence on the Chinese and Russian markets. Moreover, the country ranks near the bottom of every scale we use in international relations to measure public freedoms and political transparency. At the same time, the country is also a strategic partner of the West and has been nurtured by the United States and the European Union, not to mention the current political pains that make this great power a better potential friend than the other way around.
Mongolia gained independence from the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and was briefly a theocracy before the Mongolian Revolution of 1921 sealed its fate within the interests of the Soviet Union. The brutal Soviet purges and Stalinist collectivization of the 1920s produced a repressive homegrown dictatorship under Khorloogiin Choibalsan—who was replaced by his handpicked successor, Yumjagiin Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal, who served until 1984. proved in. These themes are played out in classic Mongolian films, e.g. unforgettable autumn (1977), ulintumur (2004), wolf pack wolf pack (1939), and words from the heart (2003.) Its modern politics eschews the film’s key mixture of confident independence and socialist nostalgia.
Mongolia adopted a new democratic constitution in 1992. A neoliberal path was fostered with the support of Modern Mongolia is now a semi-presidential republic with a directly elected prime minister and president. It has a mixed majority-proportional electoral system and has introduced significant reforms to protect women’s rights and parliamentary representation. So, in 2024, with the recent elections, how do we plan for Mongolia’s future? In short, this vast country – far larger than the total land area of Europe – has a long way to go if it is to achieve the democratic credentials it claims to seek.
Just before the vote, I delivered a speech to the spokesperson’s office of the current Prime Minister and Chairman of the Mongolian People’s Party:
We are hopeful for a new democratic future for the Mongolian people and to put any corrupt mistakes of the past behind them. The new MPP emphasizes “people first” and party interests second. We hope that the people of Mongolia will proudly join us in a new era of true economic prosperity that respects ordinary people and all Mongolians.
Oddly enough, this is almost exactly what the office of President Battulga told me. The president is a member of the rival Democratic Party, a center-right party that dates back to the democratic revolution of the late 1980s.
We can no longer let the people down. This election is an unprecedented opportunity for Mongolia to take the step it deserves as a global democratic society. We have shown how to advance these steps by promoting women’s, labor and children’s rights and protecting minority groups. This election provides us with the opportunity to do more to make all of these aspirations of modern Mongolians a reality.
The Huns, Mongolia’s third largest party participating in the 2024 elections, appear more cautious, perhaps reflecting their center-right leanings. A spokesman for party chairman Dorje Kand said Mongolian people need to be more realistic about economic affordability:
We see the PPP, DMK and many other parties making promises on everything from roads to herdsmen welfare…but none of them remotely address the crucial issue of how we will pay for empty campaign promises. In fact, they are far from providing solutions to Mongolia’s needs like the most stupid environmental foresters…. Ultimately they don’t see this either; we have two big markets – China and the Russian Federation. Tell a small herder that he has to hire a disabled woman to get funding from the EU or US embassy and I will show you a business that is about to disappear. No amount of fancy democratic appropriation can put goats on the herders’ table. The fact is we have two big markets and they pay us. Tell any cattleman to wait to fill out a hundred forms to be sent to Washington or Brussels and he will say he would rather give mining companies a little more money to get through the winter.
A spokesman for Mongolia’s Green Party was also pessimistic: “We know our times are still far away… but will the Mongolian steppes wait?” National Alliance leader Mr Prevdava was also keen to highlight his party’s green credentials . The New Alliance, the youngest party in the region, lists green and women’s issues as top concerns. All of this suggests that a political diversity is slowly emerging that did not exist before.
On the electoral front, I would say that voting management has improved immeasurably, and while corruption has never been eliminated from the Mongolian media, new measures in electoral governance appear to be transparent. There is a profound juxtaposition between rural residents voting in traditional attire, sometimes caring for family pets, and the highly sophisticated computer-scanning systems used by the Central Election Commission to enter and digest voting results. The acid test of a poll’s honesty is usually the level of complaint from party observers, which, frankly, is pretty muted. The results were almost as expected, the entire process was open to local and international observation, and every stage of the process appeared transparent.
Other parties running in the 2024 elections include Fianna Fáil, Civic Unity Participation Party and New United Alliance. All of these parties include alliances or mergers, which makes their names less self-explanatory than one might think. Preliminary results showed that the Mongolian People’s Party received 35% of the vote and won 68 of 126 seats. The main opposition Democratic Party received 42 votes. The Electoral Commission confirmed that the national voter turnout rate was 69.3%. Nearly all the smaller parties have had occasional minor successes that hint at the dawn of a future majority.
One might be forgiven for thinking that Mongolian politics has always been a struggle between the traditionalism of the Mongolian People’s Party, the inheritors of the “gay era”, and the seemingly more progressive modernist forces brought about by the Democratic Party. The capture of eight seats by the Huns is evidence of the future “Third Way”. Political similarities between the major parties remain evident, making personality politics appear to be more important than history or ideology in Mongolian polls. The writer has become accustomed to seeing events in Mongolia as a rehash of the country’s famous film productions, with recurring themes including people’s rights, herders’ livelihoods, encroachment by mining interests and the conflict between urbanization and traditional grasslands. The voices of women, green, environment and other issues were significantly increased in this election, but it did not have much impact on the final result.
With its majority reduced, the PPP must effectively balance power with its rivals. How this will play out remains to be seen. This particular episode in Mongolia’s bizarre political cinema ends with a recognition of what constitutes actual power. The Hun Party clearly emerges as a potential future third party rival, while elsewhere there is a degree of diversity in the achievements of parties such as the Women’s Party, the Greens and other special interest groups. There is also the possibility of a future coalition government between the Popular Party, the Democratic Party and (perhaps in the future) Honduras, heralding the death knell for the Popular Party’s post-independence supremacy.
Mongolian politics remains an echo of the classic film with its theoretical interweaving and the main political parties becoming heroes in the happy ending. Even more worryingly, this election will do nothing to address the most troubling reality that Mongolia remains economically dependent on Russia and China. Just like the Mongolian film works, one can feel the old French saying: “Everything changes, everything remains the same.”
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