Corruption looms large as Mongolia gears up for elections
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00:00Yenna, last days of campaigning for candidates, remind our viewers what is the political landscape
00:05there for a start? Well, Mongolia is a parliamentary democracy and there are two
00:11political parties that really dominate the scene there. There's the MPP, the Mongolia's People's
00:16Party, which is the oldest one in the country and the one that governed when Mongolia was a
00:21Soviet satellite. And since the country became a democracy, the MPP has come out top of the
00:27all but two parliamentary elections and has been ruling with a comfortable margin there for almost
00:34a decade. Then you have the opposition. The main opposition is the Democratic Party. They sit on
00:38the centre right and they promote economic liberalism. Now, critics of the current ruling
00:45party warn of a democratic backsliding of Labour, pointing to curbs on freedom of the press and on
00:50civil society. And this year, actually, the campaign even took an extremely violent turn as
00:56well. Earlier this month, a regional politician and a member of the Democratic Party was killed
01:01at a rally and there's been virtually no reporting about this incident. And that
01:09itself really does say a lot. Despite these limits, this coal rich nation is a relatively
01:14vibrant democracy and there just aren't so many in the region. As you say, Mongolia,
01:19a sandwich between Russia and China, will also be important because it's the first one since
01:28the major electoral reform, which expanded the legislature from 76 to 126 seats. Now,
01:34that's a move that would give, in theory, more opportunities for smaller
01:40parties to have their voice in parliament as well.
01:43You know, we're having a few difficulties with your sound, but we'll press on and hope people
01:46are managing to hear you properly. What are the biggest issues, then, on voters' minds, would you say?
01:54Well, there'll be three main issues we've been speaking to. It's inequality, air pollution and
02:01corruption. Now, access to education, poverty, alleviation, this is all about inequality. When
02:06it comes to air pollution, we're talking about Ulaanbaatar, the capital mainly, because it is
02:11one of the most polluted cities in the world and almost half of Mongolia's population lives there.
02:17The latter issue, corruption. Now, this is a big one. And there was a huge scandal back in 2022
02:23when billions of US dollars' worth of coal export revenue was found to be missing from public
02:29coffers. And this led to protests in the capital in the freezing cold weather. This Friday's vote
02:34will be the first one since that public uproar. We actually sat down with a candidate of one
02:40of the sole opposition parties who helped expose that scandal to the public.
02:51People were disgusted by the coal theft scandal. It made them feel hate. And it's very hard to
02:57think about hope or a bright future after these kinds of negative emotions.
03:03But we still have a democratic parliament, which means we have to trust the governance system
03:09to believe we should be involved. It means we need to vote for the right candidate who can
03:14represent us. As politicians' views reflect, many of the voters we've been speaking to on the streets
03:24as well, they all mentioned these corruption scandals and they link it to the other problems
03:27as well. And for them, this stolen money, if you will, this public money that could have been spent
03:32on, you know, youth and education, unemployment, or for the fight for clean air as well. Now,
03:37will this anger translate in the polls? We'll have to see at the end of the week when the
03:42elections take place on Friday. Yenna, thanks very much. Yenna Li joining us there from
03:46Beijing. Apologies once again for the sound there. Hopefully, you managed to work out
03:49what Yenna was telling us about there. A lot more of her report, of course,
03:53from Mongolia to come here on France 24.