Mongolia’s politicians are at a dead-end.
Faced with next year’s parliamentary elections, Mongolian parliament members have no other choice but to change the voting system toward a free and fair election with respect to citizens’ voting rights.
The public uprising over fraudulent parliamentary elections last year proved to be a bitter lesson to our government for drastically skewing voters’ representation. Then, candidates joined parliament with 5000 votes while those who counted 100,000 could not. 1/3 of the 76 members represented Ulaanbaatar city when half of the nation’s population resides in Ulaanbaatar. An even smaller portion of the state budget investment was designated to the city. Yet today, children in Ulaanbaatar’s peripheries live without electricity and study in a class of 50.
So to improve the election system, our two political parties propose a mixture between proportional representation and representation by majority. As of now, they are positioned at the opposing ends of the issue in regards of which method should dominate in this cocktail. Their dispute is almost breaking up the current joint government.
The People’s Party declared their independent decision to conduct a national survey, with which some Democratic Party representatives openly disagreed. Finally, they decided to use the chance and include questions on the rest of the issues in the government. The supplementary questions would include whether a parliament member is a state member and whether or not to make a few changes to the Constitution. Other concerns to be included are whether parliament members’ right to immunity should be limited and whether to extend the right to voters’ re-election.
In any event, evidently our parliament members are more focused on how to get themselves re-elected.
We already have a law on national referendum. But the Ruling party during the year 2000 (currently the People’s Party) did not apply this law when they made seven amendments to the Constitution that included allowing lawmakers to be members of the Cabinet and the executive branch. Thus parliamentary members were permitted to be Ministers regardless of public opinion. Suddenly our parliament members need the public opinion on the best way to get themselves re-elected.
It is clear that for our politicians the public is their cold weapon. For political parties skilled at confusing voters, intentional misinterpretation of the national referendum is a work of a fingertip. For them, the national referendum will serve a good excuse to adjust the system to their personal advantage. Surely a national survey now is like a good warm-up that sharpens all the hidden and disclosed tools used in the upcoming election race.
A fair and free parliamentary election is our only opportunity to hold accountable those few individuals who have been making important political, economic decisions in favour of their political parties. Mongolian citizens are beginning to realize this and so do our politicians, who are reminding us of an old Mongolian saying, “Fire your cannon before you die.” They look for every chance to get re-elected.
In a broader context, we Mongolians are not just changing our election system, but actually shaping the future of our system of state governance. By changing the voting structure we are addressing the issue of need to create a bicameral parliament. Though we are not a federal system, this would raise the question of relevance of the President’s seat. Or, we may call the head of the executive power as President and not the Prime Minister.
Overall, there is a strong tendency to see new political parties and leaders on the political arena. The ways of voting for representatives to the State Great Khural are important, but more important is the question, who will we vote for? Voters look for a candidate’s profession, qualifications and character etc., not their political affiliations. Citizens understand that mayors and governors should be elected from residents after seeing so many travelling governors and mayors who were nominated by their political parties and report to them only, not to people. After all, representing political parties is not the ultimate goal of the State Great Khural.
For now, to finalize the task at hand on improving the election system, all that is left for the two political parties is honest execution.
Translated by J. Ariunaa
July 06, 2011