Mongolia is moving ahead in the world through its economic growth rate. However, there is a danger that a disaster called “corruption” may seep into every social and political layer of our country, which could ultimately strangle this country to death along with its people. Nevertheless, instead of eliminating the cause of this danger, people are still playing along with the corrupt politicians and are spending days and months taking part in the play staged by them.
In the last ten years, as Mongolia’s society and economy has developed, its material wealth increased with at an exponential rate, especially our mining income. However, the way of thinking of both our government’s internal oversight organization and the public is incapable of catching up with the growth rate of our economy and oversight on government operations cannot be developed. This is why Mongolia is sinking in corruption and in some cases is even starting to become legalised.
Mongolians have not fully understood yet that public corruption is posing the greatest threat to national security, which explains why urgent, decisive measures against it are not being taken. Most of the gold mined in a year and rare historical and cultural exhibits, even a whole dinosaur skeleton, are being smuggled out of Mongolia and are being sold for huge amounts.
A very rare dinosaur skeleton (Tyrannosaurus Bataar) that was sold in an auction recently in the United States is giving us a key idea about corruption in Mongolia, is it not? One of the many explanations as to why dinosaurs became extinct is that their brain was not able to control its continuously growing body. Mongolia’s corruption is becoming bigger and bigger like a dinosaur and the government is failing to control its body.
The current state of public corruption
The most serious threat posed to our country’s national security today is corruption, especially public corruption. Corruption is found in every single cell of social life, constantly deteriorating our quality of life. The air we breathe, water we drink, quality of food we consume and its security are telling and warning us about it. People who take public or private vehicles in Ulaanbaatar are spending half of the day in traffic jams. Roads are “fixed” every year and then they are destroyed to dig canals for cables. What does this tell us? Both cars and people overcrowd a road because a corrupt official has already sold the sidewalk.
No matter how many promises politicians make in the future tense or how much they are complimenting each other, no principal changes have occurred in the quality of public services, bureaucracy is still being strengthened and people are given all kinds of public services only when they are present themselves. A government organization demands a document issued by the other to be re-authenticated by notarization filching people’s hard-earned money. If you forgot your driver’s license at home, you would instantly become a criminal.
Corruption is becoming more resilient in places where financial problems can be solved with the authority of the government and, when an opportunity comes up, they are not letting them go to waste. Grand corruption, high-level corruption that takes place at the decision making end of politics, has even started to become legalized.
Land allocation, especially operations associated with trading licenses for using Ulaanbaatar’s land and land for mining without taxes, has become the golden thread of hyper profits managed by politicians.
State-owned companies are still the legalized nest of corruption of the ruling political parties and their leaders.
Our members of parliament have the privilege of being given billions of tugrugs from the public budget to be spent on his electoral district and to buy the right to be elected using public money. A political party has managed to declare its independence from people by building a palace for themselves with MNT 14 billion from the public budget.
Our state has basically become a hostage of interest groups. Finance of political parties is still kept secret and government posts are being sold for donations to the party.
A trend of “zaisaning” has spread to every possible place in the Bogd Mountain and Yarmag after they turned their corruption into legitimate terms by changing laws after selling “under the table” lands of a mountain protected by the state. The fact that the Constitutional Court of Mongolia, which is supposed to stop all these unlawful operations, has moved to a palace in Zaisan suggests that public corruption is more protected than the Bogd Mountain.
Corruption is limiting the benefits of economic growth to the public, is miss-shaping the administration of government institutions and is deteriorating social equality and justice.
How can we fight corruption?
If high-level corruption in Mongolia is not stopped right now, nothing can be done in the future.
The only weapon of a democratic country is election and the highest expression of every Mongolian’s patriotism has to be shown during the next election by not choosing anyone who has ever had any connections to any kind of corruption mentioned above.
The time has come for Mongolians to stop those who are playing with our lives, stealing our happiness and turning our country into a nest of corruption.
Furthermore, public governance has to be made transparent. The people whose duty is to represent people and implement the laws they pass have to be stopped once and for all from using their rights for their own interests in order to become wealthy or powerful or to strengthen their position.
It is time Mongolians started movements against corruption, remove the roots of corruption and provide anti-corruption education to our children. In addition, public governance ethics training has to be implemented again throughout the country.
We have to keep the government’s involvement in any matter as low as possible and all work has to be done with public oversight. It is time we transferred pension and social care funds to organizations and people who would work under public supervision, not the government. Politics have to be stopped from becoming someone’s profession or property.
Let us take measures urgently in order to fight corruption. For instance, let us improve and develop the Civil Registration and Information Centre and its operations so that people will not have to go to other government organizations when they request a document or an inquiry. The government can give its information from its own databases.
The most recent and new information about a person should be made available to be printed out from special machines located in service centres just like in Japan. Let us stop demanding people to authenticate their document by notarization if they are personally present.
Properties can be registered under a single, simple rule within a day and charges not exceeding 0.1 percent of the total value of the property should be paid. Let us move all government tenders into an electronic tendering system.
Let us stop registering company rules. If people or business owners submitted their materials to a government organization, how about making that government organization responsible for collecting the other necessary information from the other related government organizations?
Let us make getting a driver’s license or registering a vehicle fast and smooth. “Lucky” plate numbers can be sold at expensive prices. However, the prices have to be announced to the public and the selling price should be known. Furthermore, if the traffic police carry a device with all needed information on, people will not have to always carry their driver’s license on themselves or in their car.
These obvious tasks have to be implemented and laws should be passed accordingly so that the first steps towards turning on the red light on the road to corruption will be taken.
If we fail to do so, corruption will cause more disasters in a small amount of time.
It is clear that the oligopoly network of the authorities, politicians and government officials do not want to get rid of corruption. However, we, the citizens, can do so if we can unite under our own will. Everyone should realize that corruption has become the greatest enemy of our children and the future of Mongolia.
Translated by B.Amar