Bad Losers

This blog post I wrote on Thursday after the riots in Ulaanbaatar, in Swedish. Here is an English version. I and my husband have been observing the Mongolian Ikh Khural elections as part of a research project he has been working on for the last four years. He has been present during the elections to Parliament 2004, the local elections 2004 and the President elections 2005. For me this was my first time in Mongolia. Hence, there may be conclusions drawn below that may be questioned, but this is my thoughts of what happened in this year's Parliament elections. All links from the Swedish version are omitted here, but can be found in original blog post.

"Today it is raining cats and dogs. It is as if the weather Gods have decided that the Mongolian capital and its citizens need cooling off after two days of sun and heated political demonstrations. Yesterday night (Wednesday) the curfew started. The State of Emergency means that no alcohol is served, that military police patrols the streets and that there is no traffic to speak of in the city centre. We are not missing the vodka particularly, although we do miss the fine Chinggis beer.

All citizens are expected to be inside by 10 pm. Those who remain out in the streets after this hour must be able to show identification card and have a good reason for being outdoors. On Wednesday night we heard a Mongolian man trying, via his mobile phone, in English, to persuade some tourists that this is for real. He may have been their cicerone in UB and was very worried that they would leave their hotel after 10 pm. We did not dare to challenge our accreditations, now that the elections are over, and went back to our hotel on time, not to risk 76 hours detention. We thought we heard some noice from central town after 10 pm but all TV channels but the state owned has been closed down so there is no reports from yesterday night in UB.

The Internet also seems limited and it has been difficult to send pictures. Aftonbladet (Sweden’s biggest tabloid) had an article ready about our experiences from Tuesday night and we managed, by the help of friends and a mini cab to find an Internet connection in the middle of the night, to send pictures. We had to walk back to the hotel in the middle of the night but this seems not to have helped very much. Any articles about the clashes have not appeared oi Swedish, or UK, press. (According to what we can see on the Internet and heard from friends in the UK.) Though, we have seen some reports on BBC World. The hubby’s interview with BBC Radio seem to have been passed on to Reuters who quote “political commentators” that say exactly the same as Hubby said to that nice British reporter. On BBC World’s site you can also read more about the events.

Another effect that the State of Emergency has had is that there is no hot water in central town for five days (!) which also includes the Zaluuchuud Hotel. Today I have washed my hair in freezing cold water and the body in water from the tea pot. But this we are used to from living at the summer house, so it works fine. My UK firend asked what was worse, no hot water or no beer, and the obvious answer is of course the latter. ;)

The UB inhabitants seem quite shocked by the recent events. BBC World aired, last night, a report with sad citizens. It needs to be said that this is unique in Mongolia. Their reputation from the time of Chinggis to be prone to drinking, fighting, burning down little cottages and use foul language (this is a quote from a very famous Swedish drinking song/student's farce about Chinggis Khaan) is hardly significant for today’s Mongol, except, of course, from the drinking. (Even here beer seem to have taken the vodka's place for many Mongolians.) A rather bewildered friend expressed that what happened to the MPRP’s headquarters and the Museum of Modern Art were rather “unmongolian”. On the other hand there are obviously forces that want disturbances. Now, a couple of days after the elections there may be time for a deeper analysis of what did actually happen on Tuesday afternoon and night. What forces lit the fire among the people outside the today burnt out building of MPRP?

Considering that we have not yet found out the results from the elections, that was presented by the chairman of the National Elections Committee, Mr B Battulga, on state TV Wednesday night, this analysis have to be based on the preliminary results that led to the riots. In yesterday’s Mongol Messenger we can read that 74,3 percent of the registered voters actually voted on Sunday. That is more actual voters than the last parliamentary elections.

(The final result seems to be 45 mandates to MPRP, 28 to DP, 1 to Civil Will Party, 1 Civil Movement Party, 1 Independent.)

That more people have been registered could mean several things. Either the state has been better at registering people, or it could have been caused by miscalculation of citizens, or it could be a case of registering people more than one time. The rumours have it that as many as thirteen persons have been registered as living in one small flat in one constituency, or that someone who does not live there votes on two different constituencies. However, we have not seen any proof for this, other than ID cards that were claimed to be false, shown to us by a person from the Democratic Party.

OnTuesday afternoon a preliminary result was released from the National Elections Committee, that the MPRP had gotten a majority of the seats in Parliament. Considering that the President, who has the right to veto, comes from MPRP it looked bright for the Socialists. MPRP held a press conference that they had won the elections. This was interpreted by their opponents as if the MPRP had actually had rigged the elections. A somewhat daring interpretation, one may say. It is only strategically correct to be stuck up and self confident in elections. Those who are not, will not get many votes. Who wants to cast her vote on someone who says that “well, I actually don’t think we’re gonna make it”? In addition the National Elections Committee had agreed to discuss the issue about a recount of votes. Hence, a clear message about the final result was not released.

In this situation, when one waited for the final results, but where MPRP seemed to be winning a landslide victory, the leaders of the opposition chose to act. Not by saying that we will have to wait for the final result before deciding how to act. Not by saying “it ain’t over til it’s over” or just “no comments”. No, these leaders led their supporters in a demonstration to the MPRP headquarters where some of them tried to storm the building. When the police fought back they started to yell from megaphones placed on mini buses. Among them were the fascist party, with a female spokes person who worked up the masses, which we could see over and over again on state TV yesterday. There, on TV, were also party officials in leather jackets, sunglasses and shaved heads. Hubby thought they looked like gay German leather men (Swedish pun, taken from Swedish Radio show Hassan). I thought they resembled Italian fascists. The latter was probably the intended considering that their party “emblem” is a Nazi looking eagle. (Or is it supposed to look American?) The old swastika has more and more got a new meaning here, than the Tibet Buddhist. Everywhere we see tags on walls saying “Aries - MYH” (= MUN, Mongoliin Ulsin Naxi, meaning something with Mongolian and nationalist) together with the swastika. The other day we saw a Toyota Landcruiser (the number one favourite car of Mongolian men) with a Nazi eagle and a swastika on the spare tyre on the back door. During the demonstrations angry young men approached us with comments like “death to communists” and “Hitler was great”. To the latter comment Hubby thought of answering “oh yeah, but he is also very dead”, but considered it a good idea to let it be.

According to the Mongol Messenger, close to the MPRP, both chairmen of the Civil Movement Party, who won one seat in parliament, led the demonstrations outside the MPRP building, when people started to smash windows and throw bricks and bottles on the police.

(Update: Rumour says that they have denied this, but one of them has been seen on Eagle TV, a quite opposition friendly TV channel, running up the stairs of the MPRP building leading the demonstrators.)

The largest opposition party DP (Mongolian National Democratic Party) is the one who won the latest parliament elections, together with the other parties in the Motherland Coalition. This victory was spoiled, much because the MPRP chose to contest the elections result in court. Courts that the MPRP are accused of controlling. But also because the DP obviously lacks the necessary political strategic experience. This has probably been one of the factors in this year’s elections. DP won in 2004 with their message of change but people still got the MPRP. DP’s leader Ts Elbegdorj called for a press conference on Tuesday, that is before the final results of the elections, before the demonstrations, and said:

"The MPRP has changed the election votes illegally and I am apalled at such underhand behaviour. Voting finished at midnight on June 30 and, thereafter DP candidates reflected a significant victory - up to 3 am, but this achievement had been reduced. In regard to the voting process, our party could have won 46 seats but the MPRP changed the votes to 18. Particularly in the 20 constituencies of Ulaanbaatar City, the DP had a very high rating and could have won 18 of those seats but the MPRP changed this to 10. This illegal action by the MPRP was all the more ill-concieved, in that, the DP candidates could not have wom in the previous elections if the had not received 3 000 more votes than their opposition but, now, the DP has won in this election with enlarged constituencies, by gaining 10 000 more votes than their opposition."

The reader of the Mongol Messenger asks how the DP leader could know anything about the elections results at the time. Only by listening to what volunteers and party officials had to say about their feelings from counting the votes. How could he know for sure how many voters had cast their vote on his party? DP has accused MPRP for bying votes. The question is what is up DP's sleeve. The fight for a multi candidate constituency system that the DP has led may not be that strategically smart. Now people are given a chance to spread their votes on more than one party, e g two on the MPRP, one on the DP and one on the Civil Movement Party. MPRP wants proportional elections, which is probably a good idea.

Then we have the issue of how a party leader, Member of Parliament and former Prime Minister can find it strategically right to forego the final results and accuse his opponents of such foul crimes against the Election Act. No matter if it is true or false, it is not particularly responsible to blat out such accusations at the same time as the party’s supporters are extremely disappointed over the preliminary results of the elections. This was also one of the starting shots for the riots on Tuesday.

When those who voted for the DP and the other opposition parties could hear their leaders accuse the MPRP of cheating it is not completely unthinkable that they reacted practically as I do when I lose against my sister in Scrabbles. When she writes stuff like PERUKSTOCK (a wooden thingy that you put your wig on) and LYSBOJ (light buoy). With indignation. The reason Sis wins is of course that I have an extreme bad luck, that I get the wrong letters, that she is extremely lucky and gets all the right letters. Had it not been my sister I might even have accused her of cheating. Something is definitely wrong, all but her being better than I am. Take this sour feeling, that us bad losers have such a difficulty mastering, and multiply it with 10 000 people from maybe one of the most competitive people in the world. There you’ve got a crowd with a grudge.

Important here is also that the clashes had not been viable without all those young men that were actually throwing the bricks and Molotov cocktails. What political view they posess, if any, we do not know. One of the Mongolian friends believed them to be ordinary people, we are more prone to think that they come from gangs wanting a fight.

However, maybe it is as simple as the MPRP being superior to the other parties. Maybe the MPRP has a message (redistribution of funds from the mining industry) that attracts more than the opposition’s rather vague and US influenced wordings about “change” and “anti Communism”. Are not voters mainly interested in social security? E g, one of the independent politicians we met before the elections wanted to get a place in Parliament just because he was a good bloke and a lawyer. MPRP are far better strategically and organisationally. They have the economic and personnel resources to visit all the soums (municipalities) outside UB, while the DP and the others are concentrated to the capital. MPRP also has a great propaganda machine and are able to show how, indeed, good and serious they are.

What party has been the best at stopping the 70-percent state budget deficit? (Source: Sida - Swedish International Development Agency, 2004) A deficit that are “solved” by development money. And what party are the countries paying the development assistance most likely to trust? (Both the Social Democrats in Sweden and Labour in the UK support the MPRP.) The big problem, as I see it, is the lack of politics with a real content in Mongolia. This bends at the knees under the budget deficit and it is hard for the parties to find and pursue a real politics (not meaning real politics as in realistic). Now it is mostly sweeping demands, empty words and black propaganda. Even the MPRP, with a democratic structure, are ruled from the top. How difficult will it be, then, for a member of e g the DP to have an effect on the party’s politics. Maybe the only thing left is to throw bricks."