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Mongolia is the darling of the
mining industry, but there are questions about the country’s stability
following the arrest of a former president in the heated political atmosphere
ahead of June elections.
Mongolia’s three million people are
sitting on untapped precious metal and mineral resources worth an estimated $1
trillion and economic growth is barrelling along in double-digit figures,
including 17.3 per cent last year.
But since it emerged from the
collapsed Soviet Union in 1990, Mongolia’s early successes with creating a
vibrant democracy have subsided into bitter factionalism, outrageous corruption
and incompetent government.
The arrest 10 days ago of former
president and now leading opposition leader Nambar Enkhbayar by agents of
Mongolia’s Independent Authority Against Corruption (IAAC) is being widely seen
as more of an example of extreme partisan politics than of an effort by the
administration to come to grips with corruption.
The arrest led swiftly to a large
demonstration by supporters of Enkhbayar, who was prime minister in the
Communist-spawned Mongolian People’s Party government from 2000 to 2004 and
then president from 2005 to 2009, when he was narrowly defeated by current
President Tsakhia Elbegdorj of the Democracy Party.
Hundreds of people gathered in
central Sukhbaatar Square in the capital Ulaanbaatar and mounted a noisy but
peaceful demonstration outside the parliament building.
But similar demonstrations in the
past have been violent. Officials shut schools in the capital in advance of the
latest protest, and embassies closed down and warned their nationals to stay
off the streets.
It was the continuing fallout from a
similar demonstration after disputed parliamentary elections in 2008, in which
five people were killed, that raised fears of more violence, and which is being
seen by observers in Mongolia as the true reason for Enkhbayar’s arrest and the
responding protest by his supporters.
After Enkhbayar’s defeat in the 2009
presidential race he set up his own party, the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary
Party (MPRP), reviving the name of the one-party government in the Soviet era.
Enkhbayar’s MPRP is set to do well
in the June parliamentary elections. In preparation for that campaign, on the
day before he was arrested, he tried to lay to rest controversy about his role
as president in the 2008 riots and killings.
He produced voluminous records of
meetings he and other political leaders had with the National Security Council
to respond to the postelection demonstrations.
The transcripts produced by
Enkhbayar tend to back his contention that it was a collective decision to
declare the four-day state-of-emergency.
The papers also tend to support his
claim that the feeling was widespread among political leaders that the then
leader of the Democracy Party and now Mongolia’s president, Elbegdorj, had
incited the violence by claiming the election results were fixed.
Elbegdorj has always denied that
allegation, but the timing of Enkhbayar’s arrest 10 days ago has inevitably
fuelled speculation that the detention was spurred more by political motives
than genuine concern with graft, of which there are few if any Mongolian
politicians who are innocent bystanders.
The IAAC, which answers to
parliament, insists the timing of the arrest of Enkhbayar was entirely
coincidental and came after a year of the former president ignoring repeated
summons for interviews.
What exactly Enkhbayar is charged
with remains a bit unclear. The basic allegation is that he profited out of the
privatization of state property, including a hotel and a newspaper, and that he
diverted studio equipment donated by Japan and intended for a monastery to set
up his own new television station.
June’s elections are approaching at
a time when Mongolia is facing a host of contradictions stemming from its
transition to democracy. There are also the tectonic tremors in its economy as
it shifts from a basis in agriculture and semi-nomadic herding on the country’s
vast grassland steppes to one based on mining.
Political leaders have wrestled with
the horrendous problems of trying to develop mining policy and regulations.
They continue to struggle with fashioning a mining industry that benefits the
country and its people even as hordes of mining company carpetbaggers from
Australia, Europe, the United States and Canada clamour at their doors for
concessions.
If they can get it right, the
country’s three million people could have one of the world’s higher standards
of living. But so far Mongolians have seen only widening disparity between rich
and poor, and even a climbing poverty rate from 35 per cent in 2008 to 40 per
cent in 2011.
In a demonstration of the lack of experience
and understanding among Mongolian politicians and officials of how to manage
this kind of economy, the government in 2008 decided to try to bring down
poverty by distributing from mining revenues the equivalent of $16 a month to
every Mongolian.
The result is inflation of over 10
per cent, which is expected to top 15 per cent this year if the government
follows through on promises to boost the salaries of all public servants by 53
per cent.
