Questions over who gains from Mongolian prime minister's downfall
Soon after the start of the demonstrations that led
Mongolia's prime minister to resign
last week, Enkhbadral Myagmar noticed masked figures following him when he left home. One day, after he received a call from an unfamiliar number, a man on the street asked to use his phone and when he was finished, Enkhbadral saw he had called the same number.
The 32-year-old sociologist was one of a small group that organised the protests, which followed reports of lavish spending by former prime minister
Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene
's 23-year-old son. The others had noticed suspicious behaviour too and all had been subject to aggressive trolling online.
'We kept it quiet because we didn't want to scare young people away from joining the protests,' says Enkhbadral.
The daily demonstrations in front of the building on Ulaanbaatar's Sukhbaatar Square that houses the State Great Hural, Mongolia's parliament, began on May 14th with just 40 people. But by the time the prime minister announced his resignation last week, thousands were coming to the square every day.
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'It was started by a group of friends who all knew one another and had collaborated on things before. I am the oldest, the others are in their 20s,' Enkhbadral said, adding that none of the group had any political party affiliations.
'It was building up over time, the frustration over how freedom of speech and media freedom, and civic space, was shrinking. It was all building up and the outburst was this protest. As soon as the news about the lavish lifestyle of the prime minister's son came out on social media, frustration really peaked, and then they started to contact each other.'
Oyun-Erdene, who became Mongolia's prime minister in 2021, rose to prominence as an organiser of mass demonstrations against corruption and presented himself as a politician in touch with ordinary people. But when his son's fiancee posted pictures of an expensive Dior bag and boasted of helicopter rides and luxury cars, it was not clear how the couple could afford such a lifestyle.
The demonstrators demanded an explanation from the prime minister but for weeks he declined to address the issue. Even when, on the eve of his resignation, Oyun-Erdene and his son submitted financial statements to anti-corruption authorities, they offered no public account of where the money came from.
With 3.5 million people living on a landlocked territory between Russia and China, 22 times the size of Ireland, Mongolia is the most sparsely-populated country in the world. Rich in copper, gold, coal and other minerals, it is still a lower middle-income country where 30 per cent of the population live below the poverty line.
A communist state with close ties to the Soviet Union from 1921 until 1990, Mongolia has been a parliamentary democracy for the past 35 years. International monitors have consistently approved the country's elections as free and fair but the political system has been dogged by corruption, much of it linked to the mining industry.
'After 70 years under a socialist system, the first accumulation of capital was only possible in mining and real estate. And this was of course misused by people close to decision-making,' said Jargalsaikhan Dambadarjaa, an economist and policy analyst who runs the DeFacto Institute in Ulaanbaatar.
'Because of this unequal distribution of wealth there are groups which support political parties above or under the table and certain interests prevail.'
Mongolia's then prime minister Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene bows after losing his position in a vote on June 3rd. Photograph: Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir/AFP via Getty Images
Oyun-Erdene's government, a grand coalition including his Mongolian People's Party (MPP) and their usual opponents in the Democratic Party, commanded 94 per cent of the seats in parliament. Last April, it passed a long-anticipated law establishing a sovereign wealth fund that allows the government to take a 34 per cent stake in 16 mines judged to contain strategic mineral deposits.
'That's why this guy paid the cost. He finally wanted to really accumulate money in this wealth fund,' Jargalsaikhan said.
'Out of the 16 mines, seven are state-owned, which means they can give money to the wealth fund. But the other nine are owned by private individuals, nine families really. They don't want to, because this new law says that 34 per cent of the deposits of the strategic mines come to the state and will accumulate into that fund. You can imagine what big money we're talking about.'
Jargalsaikhan believes that the new government will leave the sovereign wealth fund law on the books but that it will not implement it. So the state will simply not move to take its 34 per cent stake in the privately-owned mines.
Enkhbadral agrees that the private mining interests are probably happy to see the back of Oyun-Erdene but he rejects any suggestion that they orchestrated or manipulated the demonstrations. And he argues that strengthening Mongolia's democratic culture is essential to make politicians more accountable and their links with moneyed interests more transparent.
'To maintain the legitimacy of the protest and to protect it from interference from outside interests, we formulated three demands,' he said.
'The first was that the prime minister should resign. The second was an end to the grand coalition and the return of a parliamentary opposition. The third was that there should be no constitutional amendment to allow the president to run for another term in office.'
Oyun-Erdene claimed he was the victim of an 'organised campaign' by 'major, visible and hidden interests' but when he failed to win a majority in a confidence vote on June 2nd, he resigned as prime minister. His MPP announced the end of the grand coalition, putting the Democratic Party back into opposition.
Mongolia's president is directly elected and is limited to a single, six-year term. Although the office has few executive powers, the president appoints the chief justice and nominates other members of the judiciary and the chief prosecutor, chairs the national security council and can veto legislation.
Demonstrators demanding the resignation of then prime minister Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene earlier this month. Photograph: Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir/AFP via Getty Images
There has long been speculation that Khürelsükh Ukhnaa, who took office in 2021, would attempt to seek a second term and to change the constitution to give the president more powers. But the president confirmed last week that he had no intention of seeking a further term in office, conceding the demonstrators' third demand.
'All the protests and demonstrations before this one, they were never successful in the end, or they were used by the government. But this protest achieved its demands,' Enkhbadral said.
'Since 2008, any kind of demonstration was not a way to change anything. They were all very unsuccessful. This one not only won the three demands, but also culturally, it set a new standard. Every day we had agendas, every day, whatever the protesters were doing was transparent and announced. The organisers were young people from media backgrounds and from civil society and they brought a new approach to democracy. It showed a new era of democracy emerging in Mongolia.'
The MPP this week nominated Zandanshatar Gombojav, president Khürelsükh's chief of staff and a former party general secretary, as prime minister. Enkhbadral is optimistic that the Democratic Party will resume its role as an opposition party in holding the government to account.
New legislation regulating political parties and requiring greater transparency on their funding should come into force after a year-long delay. And a change to the electoral system means there are now more members of parliament, a portion of whom are elected in individual constituencies rather than as part of a party list.
'Ever since the Covid pandemic, we have had what we call a PR government that tried to buy the media and control the information that the public received,' Enkhbadral said.
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'And their attitude was, we're going to make you think what we want you to think. So the outcome of the demonstration is not about one person or one government, one coalition. Its effect is to break this PR government that has been in place since the pandemic until now.'
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Irish Times
7 days ago
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Irish Times
14-06-2025
- Irish Times
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It was a great move for my life, I have no regrets' Opens in new window ] 'Each country has ample agency to redefine both the extent and the limits of co-operation in the region, both within the alliance structure as well as across adversarial ideological alliances. So while both Washington and the newly elected government in Seoul have pledged the continuous strengthening of alliance co-operation, both bilateral and multilateral, and to bolster readiness against the threats, there's a degree of uncertainty about the sustainability of such co-operation.' Over two days, participants in the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue discussed security challenges and multilateral co-operation in northeast Asia, co-operation with central Asia, climate change and energy resilience. Mongolia will host the Cop17 climate talks in 2026 and the country has suffered an increasing number of severe weather events linked to climate change. 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Irish Times
14-06-2025
- Irish Times
Los Angeles is only the beginning: Trump is normalising military enforcement of law and order
When a country's leader celebrates their birthday with a big military parade it doesn't look much like democracy. Today, as Donald Trump turns 79, that is precisely what will happen in Washington, DC. Yet as tanks roll down the city's wide avenues, a nationwide mass opposition movement is forming. Trump casts the use of the military as a necessary tool against growing disorder, while his opponents will try to frame it for what it is: a power grab that threatens the foundations of American democracy. Today's events will escalate the conflict that began in Los Angeles over the past several days – and ratchet up the battle to control the narrative. On June 6th, workplace raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of people, many of whom have the legal right to live and work in the United States . Inevitably these raids sparked protests, which Trump used as justification to call in the national guard and the marines. He depicted LA as a city 'invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy' that 'would be burning' if he had not acted decisively. Armed forces have rarely been used to suppress civil unrest in the history of the US or any other democracy. One has to go back to the Rodney King riots of 1992 – also in Los Angeles – for precedent, and all the way back to the Selma marches of 1965 when they were deployed to protect a peaceful civil rights march, despite the objections of state and local authorities. READ MORE It is deeply ironic that Trump poses as a figure of law and order when a mob of his supporters led an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021 during which more than 150 police officers were injured. Trump called it a 'day of love' and pardoned all of the perpetrators on his first day in office. Now he also grossly misrepresents the real situation in Los Angeles. While there is sporadic violence, it is hardly on the scale of the King uprising or even, arguably, this week's rioting in Ballymena. Most protesting in LA has been non-violent, and it was entirely non-violent until June 7th, when Trump called in the national guard. His actions have provoked violence, not quelled it. Yet images of a few protesters burning self-driving cars or throwing rocks at the police, endlessly circulated on right-wing social media, give ostensible credence to his claims. Trump appears to have deliberately manufactured a crisis for political reasons. In the short term, he needed to rally his base behind him. His budgetary legislation – his so-called 'big, beautiful Bill' – is stalled in Congress. Because it would massively inflate the national debt, it has proved controversial among many of his own supporters, most notably Elon Musk, with whom Trump had a very public falling out earlier this month. But the spectacle of public disorder in a liberal city and state more friendly to undocumented migrants has united his supporters. Trump's actions also have a longer-term political goal: normalising the use of military forces in law enforcement. American law generally forbids the domestic deployment of the armed forces. Two of the exceptions are in cases of invasion or insurrection. It is hardly a coincidence that the US president and his supporters have consistently referred to the 'invasion' of migrants and labelled protesters exercising a basic democratic right as 'insurrectionists'. Yet Trump's actions do not come free of political risk. His show of force is actually an admission of weakness. After all, if the Maga movement could be sure of winning future elections, it wouldn't need to resort to military force. But it would likely lose fair and free contests in 2026 and 2028. A majority of Americans disapprove of Trump's performance as president. His economic policy – a main reason he was elected – will hurt ordinary voters. In addition to inflating the national debt, the 'big, beautiful Bill' would massively redistribute wealth upwards to the richest Americans, take away health insurance from millions of Americans and stoke inflation. Most Americans may approve of Trump's goal of deporting undocumented migrants but most disapprove of the draconian methods he is using. The deployment of armed forces to LA has not been popular. Trump needed to generate political unrest to act the strongman, but in so doing he has sparked the first massive protest movement against his rule. Protests have spread beyond Los Angeles to other big cities including Chicago, Houston, New York and San Francisco. The vast majority of protesters have been non-violent. The previously planned 'No kings' demonstrations – happening today to challenge Trump's military display and his authoritarianism – have been given new energy. More than 2,000 demonstrations are planned throughout the country. Trump has also unified the political opposition. The Democratic Party, which has been lost at sea for much of Trump's second term, now seems to understand its role. Democrats at all levels of government are voicing their support for peaceful protest and their opposition to Trump's use of the military and taking some personal risk in doing so. California governor Gavin Newsom has become a prominent spokesperson, a role that led Trump to threaten his arrest. Senator Alex Padilla from California was tackled and handcuffed by FBI and Secret Service agents just for trying to ask questions during a press conference by Kristi Noem, Trump's homeland security secretary. Much of what happened in the US these past several days was predictable, but it is unclear how things will play out from here. The potential for violent clashes is very high. So far, Trump's narrative of civil unrest is focused on the meme of protesters burning cars. The authoritarian danger of his use of the military remains abstract, as troops have not yet been used to suppress protests. The opposition may soon have its own defining image if a US soldier is recorded beating, clubbing or shooting a nonviolent protester. Trump's second term might well be defined by violent clashes on American streets and the reverberating battles of interpreting that unrest. Los Angeles is only the beginning.
