The ruling Mongolian People’s Party is expected to be re-elected despite concerns about its governance.
Voting has begun in Mongolia, with the ruling Mongolian People’s Party (MPP) widely expected to win despite growing public anger over corruption and the state of the economy.
Voters across the vast country sandwiched between China and Russia elect 126 members to an expanded State Duma (parliament).
Polling opens at 7am local time (23:00 GMT on Thursday) and closes at 10pm (14:00 GMT), with provisional results expected within hours after automated vote counting.
Prime Minister Lubsanamsulain Oyun-Erdene’s MPP won a landslide victory in the last election in 2020 but there is growing dissatisfaction over deep-rooted corruption, the rising cost of living and a lack of opportunities for young people, who make up almost two-thirds of the population.
Enkmandak Boldbaatar, a 38-year-old voter from the outskirts of the capital, Ulaanbaatar, said he did not vote for either the MPP or the main opposition Democrat Party because they performed poorly in the election. Nineteen parties are vying for seats in parliament.
“I’ve lived here for 38 years and the area remains the same,” Boldbaatar told The Associated Press. “All that’s been built is roads and a few buildings. If it had worked for the people, things would have been different.”
The centre-right anti-corruption party HUN is expected to gain seats thanks to social media-savvy professional candidates who have strong support from the urban middle class.
“I think young people are more aware of the work of political parties,” Norohbanzad Ganbat, a 24-year-old IT worker, told AFP. “They know what MPP has done in the past four years, that’s why young people aren’t voting for this party.”
Fear of “dictatorship”
Mongolia fell five points out of 100 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index to 33, and is now ranked 121st out of 180 countries and territories on the list.
The country has also fallen in the MPP’s press freedom rankings, and activists say the rule of law is in a severe decline.
Addressing the rally on Wednesday, Oyun-Erdene accused political opponents of turning Mongolia into a “country of corrupt leaders” and called for the restoration of “discipline.”
A survey by the Sant Malar Foundation, Mongolia’s leading independent pollster, found that more than a third of Mongolians believe the country is “turning into a dictatorship.”
The streets of Ulaanbaatar, home to nearly half of Mongolia’s 3.4 million people, are decorated with colorful election posters promoting candidates across the political spectrum, from populist businessmen to nationalists, environmentalists and socialists.
For the first time in nearly a decade, political parties are required by law to have 30 percent of their candidates be women.
Former President Tsakhagin Elbegdorj, who served with the opposition Democratic Party from 2009 to 2017, welcomed the elections starting on X date on Friday morning, writing, “As the Mongolian proverb goes, ‘It is better to live according to your own choices than to live according to the choices of others.'”
“Around 260 foreign observers and 30 journalists are in attendance. We look forward to a truly democratic and transparent election,” he added.
Mongolia became a democratic nation in 1990, ending more than 60 years of communist rule.
In addition to corruption, which has sparked the recent wave of protests, key issues for voters also include unemployment and inflation as an economy reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic and then the war in Ukraine hit the country. The country’s livestock breeders have also been hit this year by a combination of extreme cold and drought known as dzud, which has killed millions of livestock.
