After Wild Election Season, What’s Next for Mongolia?

Mongolia is no exception to global trends of democratic decline. The country’s outgoing president, Battulga Khaltmaa, elected in 2017, has repeatedly been criticized for heavy-handed moves. In 2019 alone, Battulga removed the head of the Supreme Court and 17 other judges and called for the investigation of predecessor Elbegdorj Tsakhia, while Battulga himself is suspected of major corruption while serving as a minister in a previous administration. Then, less than six weeks before the recent presidential election, Battulga issued an order banning the ruling Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), the traditional counterpart to Battulga’s Democratic Party. The MPP has held a supermajority in the parliament since 2016. A recent MPP prime minister, Khurelsukh Ukhnaa, went on to be elected president in the June contest, raising some fears about all important political offices being now held by a single party.

While Khurelsukh won with 67.7 percent of the vote, the largest ever margin in a presidential election, voter turnout nationwide was just below 60 percent, lower than in previous elections (and as low as 51.2 percent in the populous and strategically critical Selenge province, for example). Additionally, a third-party candidate, Enkhbat Dangaasuren for the Right Person Coalition (KhUN), won 20 percent of the vote.

The MPP now controls both the legislature and the executive, raising further concerns about the direction in which Mongolia’s democracy is trending. Although it should be noted that the MPP-led government has in recent months implemented substantial structural changes in governance and, to a moderate degree, responded to public criticisms around the COVID-19 response, it will be under continued pressure to level the playing field for opposition parties. This includes campaign finance reform, and increasing transparency, both in party and campaign financing and in governance processes at large.

Implications for Mongolia’s Democracy

The 2020 parliamentary and 2021 presidential elections, while resulting in major wins for MPP candidates, took place after the conclusion of major legislative changes with the potential to balance out perennially knotty contradictions in Mongolia’s semi-presidential/semi-parliamentary system. Somewhat paradoxically, the MPP is now in control of a political office, the presidency, that the MPP-dominated parliament spent much of 2019 and 2020 weakening. It is expected that the MPP, which is internally divided into various factions, will move to temper attempts by Khurelsukh to take too much power.

With constitutional amendments that came into force in 2020, the president’s powers to block the appointment of new prime ministers (utilized on numerous past occasions) have been greatly checked, and prime ministers may appoint cabinet ministers without seeking parliament’s assent. While concerns about judicial independence continue to loom large, two Judicial Councils now hold the power to nominate, discipline, and remove judges. (Concerns also remain about oversight over prosecutors and corruption investigations.)

Another constitutional amendment limits presidents to single (though longer) terms. On the one hand, this measure has been welcomed by many given Battulga’s rule-by-decree, “strongman” approach. He made liberal use of both his powers to introduce legislation and to veto legislation (though his vetoes were easily overturned by the MPP’s parliamentary supermajority). On the other hand, Battulga and other former presidents, all of whom joined him in submitting to the Constitutional Court to contest the measure, were left waiting until only eight weeks before the election, and only two weeks before candidate’s documents were due at the General Election Committee, for final rulings as to whether or not the new amendment’s term-limit would apply to them or not.

Candidates and Platforms

Many also hope that the changes in government structure that the MPP has been undertaking will streamline policymaking and implementation. This was clearly a factor for Mongolian voters who voted for MPP candidate Khurelsukh in last month’s presidential election.

However, reservations about the direction and efficacy of MPP control of the government are demonstrated by support (20 percent domestically, 73 percent among voters abroad) for the third candidate, Enkhbat Dangaasuren, from the relatively new “third force,” the Right Person Coalition (KhUN). This reflects real appetite for opposition to the MPP among Mongolians. That said, KhUN has only one member in parliament, and not only lacks, but has often disavowed, a traditional party structure. Enkhbat is a former parliamentarian, but has not been active in politics since serving as the sole member of parliament representing the Citizen’s Alliance coalition from 2008-2012. He was represented more consistently in the campaign as the founder and former CEO of internet company DataCom.

The longtime opposition party to the MPP, the Democratic Party (DP), outgoing president Battulga’s party, has been completely hamstrung by internal divisions for almost the past year. The DP candidate Erdene Sodnomzundui, won only 6 percent of the vote and barely campaigned (citing lack of access to party accounts, though according to some reports he was barred from holding meetings in some areas outside the capital of Ulaanbaatar by local party branches).

The MPP-led government is under pressure to increase transparency over party financing, and to provide state funds for campaigns. The current government, however, has not responded to calls to return the parliamentary election system to a proportional one. The MPP, with a robust organization across Mongolia’s vast countryside, is greatly favored by the majoritarian election system. Shortly before the 2016 elections, the proportional system used in 2012 was declared unconstitutional. In 2016 and 2020 the MPP won 85 percent and then 82 percent of seats, respectively, but only around 45 percent of votes in both polls. In 2012, the DP had won the most seats, but only 33 percent of the total votes.

Politics, Parties, and COVID-19

While the DP did not unite behind a presidential candidate, their platform included specific legislative proposals addressing issues of concern with the MPP’s human rights record (some of which overlap with concerns about policy implementation). In particular, the DP platform emphasized the independence of prosecutors, the jurisdiction and freedom of the Anti-Corruption Agency, the power of local governments, and the right of Mongolians to access social services outside of their place of residence. Since 2017, migrants to the capital of Ulaanbaatar, where over half of the Mongolian population resides, have been unable to register there. In contrast, though the KhUN platform did note the need for an independent judiciary and Anti-Corruption Agency, and called for a relegalization of the proportional election system, it mostly focused on the importance of education and technology – something that the MPP platform did much more thoroughly and specifically.

The MPP is the successor to the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, which governed the country as a single party-state from 1924 until 1990, with the Mongolian People’s Republic a satellite of the Soviet Union. Mongolians today recognize this period as one of rapid modernization and major gains in standards of living, but also with serious deficits in the arena of human rights. This tension has undergirded political contest between the parties since 1990. On the one hand, the MPP has generally campaigned by claiming a successful, multi-decade record of achieved modernization milestones. This year the MPP lavishly celebrated a 100 year anniversary. Meanwhile, the DP, with presidential terms often interleaved with those of MPP presidents, has campaigned as the party of human rights and the 1990 revolution (though the latter’s importance has been losing relevance).

Leading up to the recent presidential election, this managed modernity versus human rights dynamic unfolded in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The MPP-led government’s response has been characterized by strict measures, but with some significant costs. There was no community spread in Mongolia until November 2020 – but borders have been mostly closed, including to Mongolian citizens who struggled to book seats on limited and expensive charter flights, or engage in informal trade that involves crossing the border into Russia and China. In January 2021, footage emerged of a woman who had just given birth and tested positive for COVID-19 being ushered outside of a maternity hospital for transfer to a COVID ward, in subzero temperatures, wearing only a light bathrobe and pajamas. Public demonstrations followed, and Khurelsukh, then the prime minister, resigned. When he was quickly replaced by his young protégé, Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai (and much of the cabinet, which had also resigned, was reappointed), the conclusion was that Khurelsukh was eyeing a run for president – which he could not do while sitting as the prime minister.

In the months between his resignation and the election campaign, Khurelsukh remained almost entirely out of the public eye, as Oyun-Erdene and his cabinet have put up a fight against two waves of COVID-19. While instituting hard lockdowns in February, and again in April and May, Mongolia has secured over 4 million doses of vaccine and has reported vaccinating the majority of the adult population as of June 15 (80 percent with two doses, 92 percent with one dose). However, most of the vaccines were from Sinopharm, and Mongolia has joined Chile, Bahrain, the UAE, and the Seychelles as having a high vaccination rate, with Chinese-made vaccines, while also seeing another steep climb in infections.

Shortly after the election, amid public pressure, it was announced that the annual Naadam sporting event scheduled for mid-July would be held again this year without a live audience. There is now public pressure to cancel even the “digital” version of the event, and also a parade and other public events related to the inauguration of Khurelsukh on June 25, and to apply all funds to the COVID-19 response

Outlook: International Relations and Economy

The Mongolian president’s powers have been pared back by the new constitutional amendments, but the important presidential role as Mongolia’s representative on the international stage remains. Mongolia’s two neighbors, Russia and China, have not signalled that there will be any changes in relations under the new administration (at the beginning of June, Foreign Minister Battsetseg Batmunkh held talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow) and the platforms included familiar language about “neighbors” and “third neighbors.” While the DP platform was more effusive about relations with “third neighbors,” and named the United States, Japan, and NATO (Battulga pressed hard for the realization of a special trade agreement with the U.S.), in its campaign platform, the MPP was explicit about continued participation in U.N. peacekeeping and stepping up participation at the United Nations.

Mongolia’s international status includes its long-term position in the global economy as a raw minerals exporter. As exports profitable to the Mongolian government (mostly in the form of raw coking coal, used for metallurgy) have become heavily tipped toward China, the MPP has been vocal since January about renegotiating the agreement regulating the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine, which the Mongolian government owns and operates with Western companies including Rio Tinto. With rising copper prices, there is incentive all around to resolve disputes and delays related to the financing and construction of the next phase of the underground mine (planned to use cutting-edge techniques and be one of the largest in the world). At the same time, during the election campaign the MPP and Khurelsukh continued to tout new minerals and petroleum refineries and power plants.

However, Mongolia severely lacks necessary transport infrastructures to develop new deposits. The main railway is a direct transit line between Irkutsk and Beijing, and is half-owned by a Russian state enterprise, which has long dragged its heels in making capital improvements while increasing volumes of transit. For any of its enterprises involved in producing refined metals, alloys, or energy for export to be successful, Mongolia would have to negotiate Russian and Chinese-controlled supply and logistics chains.