MANTHORPE: MONGOLIAN ELECTIONS MARK KEY STEP ON DEMOCRATIZATION ROAD

Depending on whom one believes, Mongolia’s former president Nambaryn Enkhbayar is either a champion of democracy targeted for judicial persecution by an increasingly authoritarian regime or he is a corrupt charlatan whose finely crafted portrayal of martyrdom hoodwinked Washington, the United Nations and the European Union.

The evidence suggests the second view is nearer the truth and Mongolia’s Constitutional Court has upheld a General Election Commission ruling that because Enkhbayar, president from 2005 to 2009, is facing five corruption charges, he is not eligible to run in parliamentary elections on June 28.

That ruling has stalled and perhaps ended Enkhbayar’s attempts at a political comeback after his defeat in the 2009 presidential election.

The parliamentary elections next week and presidential elections next year give every indication of being key stepping stones along Mongolia’s tumultuous transition which began when it emerged as an independent state from the collapsed Soviet Union in 1990.

Since then Mongolia has struggled to create a functional democracy amid the contradictions thrown up by a rapidly changing culture.

The discovery of huge mineral wealth brought hordes of mining company carpetbaggers thundering into Ulaan Bataar, seriously unsettling a traditional economy and social culture based on the semi-nomadic herding of sheep, goats and horses on the country’s vast steppeland.

Next week’s election will carry forward two significant developments on the transition road.

The contest for seats in the 76-member parliament, the State Great Khural, will be fought under new rules mixing seats allocated by proportional representation and others directly elected.

Major contestants for government are the current ruling party, the Mongolian People’s Party of Prime Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold, and the Democratic Party of President Tsakhia Elbegdorj.

The new dispensation will give smaller parties the chance to win seats in the parliament and thus influence what continues to be the major unresolved issue of Mongolian politics.

That is what kind of laws does the country want to regulate and produce the most sensible benefits from the country’s huge reserves of copper, coal, gold and many other minerals.

The philosophical argument has swung dramatically and sometimes violently on the streets between the totally laissez faire approach advocated by the men from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund who tendered advice to post-Soviet Ulaan Bataar 20 years ago, and the economic nationalists who want foreign investors thoroughly trussed and bound.

The issue also has sharp political and cultural implications because the obvious market for landlocked Mongolia’s mineral wealth is southern neighbour China.

But Mongolians have deep-seated, historically based suspicions of Chinese territorial and economic ambitions.

A recently approved new foreign investment law attempts to find some balance that will spread the benefits of mining revenues and lessen the wide disparity that has grown between those with their fingers in the till and the majority of the nearly three million population, around 30 per cent of whom live below the UN’s poverty level.

The new law identifies mining as a strategic economic sector and restricts foreign ownership to a maximum of 49-per-cent in transactions worth 100 billion tugriks, the equivalent of $76 million.

Larger investments will automatically be subject to review by government. And, in an evident bow to suspicions about China, the law contains much lower thresholds for review of investments by foreign state-owned companies.

The aim is that this law will help to contain and erode the rampant corruption that has overtaken Mongolia and distorted its development.

The capital’s transformation into a wild and wonderful gold rush city seduced many of Mongolia’s inexperienced public figures nurtured on the culture of semi-nomadic herding.

It’s alleged by Mongolia’s Independent Authority Against Corruption (IAAC) that Enkhbayar, who was prime minister from mid-2000 to 2004 and speaker of Parliament from then until becoming president in 2005, lined his own pockets on several occasions.

The five charges against him, whittled down from over 20 allegations originally, claim he diverted funds intended for a Buddhist temple, used the state airline as a personal jet service, and benefited from the improper privatization of state-owned properties.

As is his way, Enkhbayar has responded with bluster to the top court’s ruling that he is ineligible to run in the election. The decision, he said last week, was “illegal.”

Enkhbayar was arrested by the IAAC in April after he repeatedly failed to respond to requests for an interview about the allegations against him.

From the start he claimed he was the object of political persecution and his supporters say he went on hunger strike in prison.

An effective and persistent international lobbying campaign by his supporters and relatives garnered some prominent backers, including Britain’s former attorney-general Lord Goldsmith, the UN’s Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Amnesty International and United States Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Enkhbayar was released on bail on May 14 in what may or may not have been a response to international pressure.

Despite protesting his innocence, Enkhbayar shows little enthusiasm to have his day in court on the corruption charges.

Last Tuesday, the opening of his trial was postponed for the third time after Enkhbayar said his lawyer was not present because she is a candidate in the elections and was away campaigning.

The judge ruled the trial will start on Thursday, June 21, with or without the ex-president’s lawyer.

jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com

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