Mongolia: a democracy before the polls
Text by: Arnaud Jouve Follow
Liberal democracy in Mongolia, wedged between powerful neighbors, votes this Wednesday, June 24 to revive its future. Important legislative elections in a fragmented political landscape to lead a country very dependent on its mining sector. An interview with the specialist of Mongolia, Antoine Maire.
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Read moreAntoine Maire is an associate researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research, a political and economic specialist in Mongolia, author of the book Les Mongols, rebellious published in 2016 at the Ateliers Henry Dougier .
RFI : What is going on this Wednesday in Mongolia and what are the issues raised by these legislative elections?
Antoine Maire : The first issue is economic. Mongolia was hit like all countries by Covid-19, with relatively few cases and no casualties. However, this put the economy on hold. The country suffered a recession of around 10.7% in the 1st quarter. So one of the challenges of this election is to restart the economy as soon as the crisis is over with a main challenge on diversification. Mongolia is highly dependent on the mining sector which accounts for more than 90% of its exports and almost 30% of its Gross Domestic Product. One of the challenges will therefore be to put in place a development and growth strategy that allows both the diversification of economic activity, but also the integration of the entire population into growth. Because Mongolia still has a high poverty rate, estimated at around a third of the population.
The second issue is political. Mongolia made its democratic transition in 1990 and it was endowed with a Democratic Constitution in 1992 plus, in 2019, a major amendment to this Constitution which aims to strengthen government stability and promote a form of decentralization towards political decision making. So the challenge for the new government will be to implement this new Constitution and to check whether everything is going well in the new constitutional framework.
The third issue is linked to the fight against corruption. The previous term which began in 2016 was marked by significant corruption cases. In particular, there was a scandal over the distribution of state guaranteed loans to SMEs which were mainly used by parliamentarians. So public confidence has been eroded. This translates into a fairly fragmented political landscape at the time of this election, with a particularly high number of independent candidates, with around 200 independent candidates running and demonstrating this distrust of the electorate vis-à-vis its political elites. One of the challenges will therefore be to restore trust with opinion and with the population. This will require the implementation of a growth strategy, but also an exemplarity in the practice of power.
And then there is a fourth, more political issue: the preservation of this Mongolian specificity, which has been very marked since the beginning of the 1990s. Mongolia is a liberal democracy which contrasts with the authoritarian models which are put in place by its neighbors and there is always a questioning about the sustainability of this model, given the main political issues that can be exerted on the country. Parliamentarianism has been strongly criticized. We have two actors who are currently in place who are President Khaltmaa Battulga (head of state since 2017) and Prime Minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh (since 2016) who are rather in favor of a strong executive. The preservation of this Mongolian specificity and the ability of the authorities to bring it to life is the fourth challenge of this election.
What are the main political forces clashing in this election?
Mongolian political life is dominated by two main parties: the Mongolian People's Party - the former single party which did not have the name of Communist Party, but which ruled Mongolia throughout the socialist period between 1921 and 1990 - which remains a very important political force which made its transition in 1990 and is now in a rather social democratic position. It is the party which has the majority in the Mongolian Parliament after having won, in the last elections, an overwhelming majority. So the stake for this party will be to preserve a part of its deputies, in any case the majority to allow the Prime Minister to continue his action. The second political camp is made up of the Mongolian Democratic Party, the heir of all the protest movements that were born during the democratic revolution of 1990. This party is rather on a very liberal position even if it is internally divided, with a whole bunch of factions vying for party leadership.
A third group of actors is structured around the Mongolian popular and revolutionary party of former president Nambaryn Enkhbayar and the green Courage civique party. It is rather on a populist and nationalist type of positioning and advocates a nationalization of large mining deposits, the redistribution of the fruits of the growth generated by this sector among the population. To speak only of the main formations.
What is the record of the government that has held the reins until today?
The outgoing government is chaired by Prime Minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh, who has a relatively good popularity rating since he is the one who rehabilitated the popular party after the corruption scandal linked to loans to SMEs. . Several elements argue in favor of the government and are put forward by the Prime Minister to put forward his record: first, of course, the management of the coronavirus crisis, which has been welcomed by many players. Mongolia has had only imported cases, estimated at around 230 people infected and no deaths and this has been credited to the outgoing government. Another aspect was the revival of economic activity. When the People's Party came to power in 2016, it had to face a situation of near stagnation with large mining projects in particular, which were strongly questioned. With this outgoing government, on the contrary, we saw a revival of economic activity, the development of certain projects that had been put on hold until then - notably in the rail sector. So the government's record is still considered by many people to be quite good.
The political game is quite interesting since we are in a situation of cohabitation between a government which comes from the popular party and which is headed by Prime Minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh and President Khaltmaa Battulga who is a former judoka, from the Democratic Party, but on a very nationalist positioning and very hostile to China. Paradoxically, there is a good understanding between the two actors, which facilitates decision-making. So the president remains relatively little involved in the campaign, which allows the popular party to run an effective campaign and leaves the Democratic party in trouble.
What are the characteristics of Mongolia today?
Mongolia remains a singular country, marked by a way of life, nomadic pastoralism, which has receded, but which nevertheless has a very important place both in the occupation of part of the population, but especially in the imaginary that it arouses and in the values that it transmits.
There is all the same a singular aspect, it is this democratic exception that represents Mongolia: it is an exception which is confirmed over the years, even if there are moments of tension, difficulties. But Mongolia is a rather special case: it is a country which made its democratic transition in the winter of 1989-1990: a peaceful revolution, during which the single party chose to resign and to create a government of coalition to carry out the transition. Since then, there has been a sort of progressive entrenchment of democracy in the country which makes it a real exception with regular debates, deliberative democracy experiments which have been carried out. This is a very important aspect.
On the social aspect, there is all the same this divide between an elite which profits from the large mining projects and the arrival of the foreign investors, and a large part of the population which remains nevertheless in a situation of significant poverty, whether in the shantytowns of Ulan Bator (the capital) - which are called the yurt districts (traditional housing) - or in the countryside, where this remains an important issue.
What is the economic situation?
The Mongolian economy remains mainly dominated by the development of the mining sector: a lot of coal, especially that which is used in industry in China, a lot of copper and gold, some reserves of oil, uranium, l , rare earths… you can find everything. Mongolia is presented as a geological vault and mining projects are the main engine that has enabled the country to get out of the crisis caused by the market economy and capitalism. The mining sector is structured around major projects, which will play a training role on the rest of the economy and feed a whole fabric of subcontractors and foreign partners around which the world economy will be structured. There are always debates about the mode of development that Mongolia should favor. For the moment, the major mining contracts are entrusted to foreign companies, the best known being the Oyou Tolgoï copper deposit, a huge copper and gold deposit entrusted to the Australian company Rio Tinto.
There is a whole debate in Mongolia on the need to better profit from the development of the mining activity. This involves attempts to renegotiate mining contracts, this was not really the case during the last legislature, but we note that at each electoral deadline, the debate returns to the table, on the need for example to increase State participation in "deposits of strategic importance", which is the term used by the Mongolian authorities to describe these deposits. Or then on the need to share income better, and to ensure that the development of these mineral deposits will allow a little diversification of the national economy. That is to say by developing transformation projects, power plants or an infrastructure network to allow the country to develop.
It also exposes the country to significant fragility, which is the variation in commodity prices. In addition, a fall in commodity prices or a slowdown in the economy in China will have a very significant impact on economic life in Mongolia, so it is a source of significant vulnerability. The Mongolian authorities are trying to fill this weakness or respond to it by developing diversification strategies, which relate both to the development of industrial projects, but which remain for the moment quite hypothetical, and also, and above all - and c ' perhaps this is also why the last government had some rather interesting results - the development of an entire agricultural sector which goes through the industrialization of agricultural activity, to make Mongolia a form of reservoir of agricultural raw materials for its two neighbors, China and Russia.
What can we say about the geopolitical position of Mongolia in front of its powerful neighbors?
Mongolia is facing a geopolitical situation which is very complicated, linked to its geographic isolation between two authoritarian neighbors, China and Russia. And the fact that it is developing a fairly original political and economic model marked by democracy and the market economy testifies to the desire to differentiate itself in its regional environment. This requires the will of the Mongolian authorities to reduce their dependence on China, since the bulk of Mongolian exports are directed to China, which is a significant source of vulnerability which can be used periodically by Beijing to put pressure on the Mongolian authorities. This was notably the case in 2016, when the Dalai Lama visited the country, where the Chinese authorities took retaliatory measures against the Mongolian economy.
To deal with this situation, the Mongols have developed a strategy which they describe as the “third neighbor strategy”: it is based on the idea that Mongolia must necessarily have good relations with Russia, good relations with China and that it must also seek privileged relations with other partners that are the "third neighbors": the democratic and developed countries, likely to come to support this Mongolian democratic exception.
There is always this search for balance at the same time between the Russian partner, the Chinese partner which results, for example, in an initiative which had been released in 2016, the creation of an economic corridor which would extend the Chinese Silk Roads project and which would link with Russian community projects, to balance all of this. And also the development of strategic partnerships with democratic and developed countries such as Japan and the United States - the Mongols signed a strategic partnership with Washington last September - there is therefore a real desire for balance in foreign policy Mongolian. We also note this in the country's response to the coronavirus: they chose to provide symbolic aid to the United States by granting them a million dollar donation, and they immediately made the decision to grant equivalent aid to Russia which would consist in supplying them with the equivalent of a million dollars of meat exports, and another aid to China which would consist in exporting 30,000 sheep there. This is a case which is fairly symbolic, but which reveals Mongolia's desire for balance in this difficult geopolitical environment.
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