Mongolian opposition MPs boycott parliament
Updated
The Mongolian government is in limbo, after all 25 opposition Democrat MPs walked out of parliament, leaving the president without the quorum of MPs required to legally swear them in.
Presenter: Corinne Podger
Speakers: Bill Infante, the Mongolian representative of the Asian Foundation.
PODGER: Before the June 29th election, both the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and the Democratic Party told supporters they expected to win, based on separate and contradictory opinion polls. In the end, the MPRP walked away from the election with a clear victory. The DP immediately alleged the elections were marred by fraud, and many young Mongolians needed little persuading that the MPRP is simply the old Communist party in new clothes. Thousands of people rioted and set buildings and cars on fire in the capital, Ulaanbaator.
(SFX- RIOTS)
PODGER: After the president briefly imposed a state of emergency for the first time in Mongolia's history, Ulaanbaator calmed down and now, three weeks on, many residents have gone on summer holidays. The MPRP has been pressing ahead with forming a new government, but now it's all at a standstill. Bill Infante is the Mongolian representative for the Asia Foundation, who's based in Ulaanbaator:
INFANTE: If we can't form a new government, then it means we can't vote on major piece of legislation, they can't take action to move the economy forward, they can't approve licences involving some major mining companies, including some Australian mining companies, and all of these things are imperative to the issues of economy, of jobs, of growing prosperity in Mongolia. So things are very much stalemated.
PODGER: Mr Infante says while the Democratic Party still hopes to reverse the election outcome, neither the Asia Foundation's election monitors nor local observers have found evidence to support the party's claims the elections were rigged.
INFANTE: The Asia Foundation did mobilise 17 teams of observers. There were at least another 26 teams of resident observers mobilised by local embassies, and in our statement, we found there was no widespread evidence of fraud in any of the polling stations that we observed when we were present at those polling stations. We looked at approximately 100 different polling stations across the country and we have caucused among all of the observers and we still believe that our statement is accurate.
PODGER: Election results in a handful of seats still have to be finalised, but Mr Infante says some will almost certainly swell the MPRP's existing 39-seat majority in the 76-seat parliament. At the same time, he says media reports in Mongolia suggest there's also some division within the DP over the parliamentary walk-out, even though all its MPs took part:
INFANTE: At least some of the Democratic Party members feel that the Mongolian public expressed their will by electing them to office, and as the elected representatives, they feel they have an obligation to be present in parliament and to sit for the opening session when the official swearing in would occur. So in the short term, I think the Democratic Party will use the walkout to pursue some of the demands and to secure some of the conditions that they're looking for, but if the walkout lasts for any significant period of time, I think there's probably more of a downside in this to the reputation and credibility of the party than there is an upside benefit.
PODGER: One of those downsides, Mr Infante believes, is the squandering of public support the DP attracted immediately after the June 29th polls.
INFANTE: The Democratic Party certainly enjoyed an enormous amount of public support when they first raised the issues about vote and electoral irregularities. The public was heavily involved in the election; we had voter turnout of upwards of 70 percent, so Mongolians definitely take their constitutional right seriously, they participate in democracy, they vote. It's not clear if they're glued to their TVs at this point. I do think they want to see government get on with the work of government. I think they want to see government begin to grow the economy, create jobs and reduce poverty. That's a little bit of the subtext of the demonstrations on July 1st as well. Clearly there was a spark rooted in the allegations of voter or electoral irregularity that brought people to the street, and inasmuch as they were expressing disenchantment or some kind of concern with the outcome of the election, they were also saying, hey listen - we're getting horribly impacted by inflation, we don't have jobs, we remain really quite poor, and now we're unhappy about this. So start creating some jobs, is what they were saying, and I think that's what the sentiment across the country would still be.
