I published an article in the Wall Street Journal Asia, “Mongolian Democracy Crawls, But Moves Ahead“, that offers an assessment of the current, post-election state of democracy in Mongolia.
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The following gives the impression that Mongolia is a presidential system:
“It’s no small matter for a government agency to authorize the arrest of a predecessor from an opposing party when the predecessor is plotting a political comeback.”
— because the overall coverage tended to portray the current president as the head of the executive who authorized the arrest while the ruling MPP who held the real executive power at the time of the arrest has gone unmentioned, totally.
Which shouldn’t be surprising, to think of it, because the MPP and his leader(s) never ever talk about corruption. Had they talked, they would have sounded unconvincing, anyways. Most of them were brought into politics by their former boss, including and primarily, their leader, the current PM. In contrast, the current president has been very vocal on the issue and never ever shied away from bearing the brunt of all the attacks on him personally, and on Mongolia as a whole. It was leadership.
Yes, I could have phrased this more precisely, but tough to do in a short article where the explanation would have had to launch into a discussion of the division of power between pres and pm and the independence of the anti-corruption agency, etc.
This would certainly be a welcome clarification if you wanted to offer it as a comment on the WSJ site.