Mongolia's Ying and Yang

Mongolian voters may have forced a stunning change in the political scene but that should not obscure the point that Mongolia needs a new electoral system. by TOL 28 June 2004 Consider a post-communist country whose ruling party is called the Revolutionary People’s Party and has 72 out of 76 seats in the parliament. The party dominates media coverage ahead of new elections. Underneath news shots of a powerful foreign leader (in this case, U.S. President George Bush) is embedded the party’s logo. Opponents complain that the ruling party is abusing its position of power. Most outsiders’ first instinct would be to wonder whether this is actually a communist country masquerading as post-communist.

But names may be deceptive, and this brief sketch misleading. The most revolutionary component in the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) is its own transformation from a communist party into a social democratic one. Its economic policy is liberal, it has good relations with international financial institutions, and its--and Mongolia’s--political culture is far freer than those in Central Asia. Going into polling stations on 27 June, Mongolians had little reason to fear that the MPRP’s expected victory could end or radically reduce their political freedoms.

Moreover, its leader is also a man who knows from personal experience what communist revolution means. Prime Minister Enkhbayar may once have been a communist (albeit a UK-educated one from the glasnost era), but members of his family disappeared in the Stalinist purges and camps that claimed the lives of perhaps 100,000 Mongolians, fully a tenth of the population at the time.

In any case, the Mongolians have been busy building a more pluralistic type of society, one perhaps capable of resilience in the face of excessive concentrations of power. East of the Urals, there may be no country with more impressive grassroots activity and a stronger civil society--another reason why, ahead of the elections, the MPRP’s likely victory could be treated phlegmatically.

MONGOLIANS’ GREAT BALANCING ACT

The presence of a relatively strong third sector in Mongolia makes the amazing electoral success of the opposition coalition on 27 June easier to understand. And it was a stunning achievement: In the old parliament, there were just three deputies who represented parties other than the MPRP (and one independent). For four years, opposition parties have been marginalized. Ahead of the elections, they received little coverage in the media. Yet with some votes still being counted, they had won 36 of the 76 seats in parliament.

Much of the vote is perhaps attributable to protest votes. Unemployment is very high, though debate rages about how much over 20 percent it stands. The previous government pursued rapid privatization, but little foreign investment arrived. The MPRP has continued the push to privatize, but overflight fees from foreign airlines remain one of the country’s single greatest sources of income. Enkhbayar wants more than 90 percent of Mongolia’s 2.6 million people to live in cities, but red tape means that the large numbers who have moved into shanty towns on the edge of Ulaanbaatar remain without papers, rights, or access to legal work. The task of developing the country’s vast hinterland is colossal; the country has, at present, just 1,200 kilometers of tarmac roads.

Still, not every post-communist country manages to get out a sizable protest vote, let alone a vote of this size. There must be something more to this than unhappiness with the government’s policies. It could, as a TOL correspondent has argued, be a widespread desire for greater pluralism. If so, that desire might be rooted in Mongolia’s relatively active civil society--and, if that is really the case, the results of these elections are deeply welcome.

Whatever the reason, Mongolians have freed themselves from the danger of four more years of one-party domination. But there are obvious questions here: Why should we have to speculate about the role of civil society? Election politics should chiefly be a competition between parties and their manifestos, not an attempt by civil society and ordinary voters to curb an overly strong ruling party. Mongolians should have had enough information to vote for specific parties, rather than voting for the opposition simply from some general desire for broader representation. An electorate should be able to vote for policies, not simply some general concept or on the sketchiest of information about their programs.

Above all, protection against abuses of power should be guaranteed by more than the character of a political party and its leader. And, however much Mongolia’s former communists have changed, there was still cause for concern. The MPRP’s history as the world’s longest-serving ruling party (from 1921 to 1996), and the extensive property interests that it has retained since the end of the Soviet era (including its media interests), would alone be worrisome. Unfortunately, there were other questions: The opposition has in the past protested an overly active secret police, a decline in freedom of expression, and a misuse of “administrative resources”--the money and resources available to those with power.

The spotlight then falls on Mongolia’s electoral system, which elects just one winner in each district. In 1992, the MPRP won 56 percent of the vote and 92 percent of seats. In 2000, it won 52 percent of the vote and 95 percent of seats. Of course, other systems may also result in a landslide without causing major concern. In 1984, Ronald Reagan took 49 out of 50 states on his road to the White House. But the United States has a well-developed system of checks and balances; in Mongolia’s one-chamber political system, the checks and balances are weaker. Moreover, the last elections highlighted the dangers of politicians interfering with the judiciary. In 2000, at the instigation of an MPRP appointee, a district judge was sacked after annulling the result of the elections. The Supreme Court upheld the judge’s appeal, but that was not enough to prevent the judges’ professional association from removing her from her position. In a transition country like Mongolia, the risk that a first-past-the-post system will create a winner-takes-all situation is simply too great to accept.

So, regardless of whether Enkhbayar returns to office or an opposition leader comes in, reform of the electoral system should be at the top of the agenda. Enkhbayar and his predecessors may have shed their Soviet past, but unfortunately, Mongolia’s electoral system allows too much of its political legacy to linger. The architects of the constitution did not find a balance that would allow decisive leadership yet prevent one party from dominating. While the MPRP’s rather unusual logo features a yin and yang symbol in the center of a red rose, the party has never tried to build greater harmony into the electoral system. Whoever forms the next government should try to change the system--even if, through some great stroke of good fortune (or some deep-seated Mongolian desire for yin and yang), Mongolia now finds itself with a balanced parliament.