By Julian Dierkes
Of course, the one time, my frustration at endless speculation about political machinations and alliances actually gets to me, something happens, namely Prime Minister L Oyun-Erdene’s era appears to be ending. In the early morning of June 3, Oyun-Erdene lost a vote of confidence in parliament, with only 82 MPs voting, and only 44 MPs voting for confidence.
Let me quickly consider what this change means in policy terms, for the coalition, and for the MPP.
Policy
I would stick with one of my conclusions from that recent post: in policy terms, it will make very little difference who serves as the current prime minister. That is the case, because Mongolian politicians largely lack a political orientation, i.e. some kind of theme to the action they want to take.
Oyun-Erdene in my mind is a prominent example of such non-political politicians, along with Pres Khurelsukh and former pres Battulga. It has never been entirely clear to me, why they have become politicians, other than to hold power. Given the valorization of “pragmatic” solutions in Mongolia and the belief in legislative power to change the world, perhaps this makes sense to them, but it does not make sense to me, since voters do not really have a chance to predict what kind of decisions these politicians (or their parties) would make and to thus select this pattern in decision-making.
This absence of a political problem was curious in the case of Oyun-Erdene since he publicly set out and claimed to have such a program, the “Vision 2050”. But to me, that program never amounted to much more than a listing of all the various plans. There is no overall political theme in that program, like marketization, justice, equality or sustainable development. Even though it has become increasingly routine to refer to Vision 2050 as a touchstone of sorts, I am not sure that that document ever had much actual meaning.
So, if Vision 2050 somehow fades into the background as Oyun-Erdene steps away from power, I do not foresee this to make a real difference in terms of the policies pursued by the government.
Coalition
If this is the end of MPP-DP cooperation in government and the DP ministers leave cabinet, I do not find that surprising. Given the majority that the MPP holds in parliament, the “grand coalition” has not made a lot of sense to me. Publicly, the reason has been the need to build a consensus on mega projects, meaning 14 major infrastructure projects, but it is unclear why these infrastructure investment decisions require a consensus and most of the projects appear to be largely pie-in-the-sky and unlikely to be completed any time soon in any case. So, real reasons seems to have been to include opposition parties to buy them off and reduce their opposition actions. Now, in the past week of protests around Oyun-Erdene’s son’s girlfriend’s Chanel bag (yes!), some DP MPs have been very involved, especially some list-MPs, so perhaps this bargain “party gets to name ministers and reduces noice in return” did not work out for the MPP and they have decided to cancel the bargain.
This could mean that the DP (re)grows a backbone and acts more like an opposition.
It is unclear what this might mean to KhUN participation in government. Continue to cooperate and you increasingly look like that, i.e. staying in bed with the MPP, being bought off with some ministerial posts. This does not seem like an obvious route to electoral success in the 2028 parliamentary election.
MPP
Even though Oyun-Erdene came into government as a representative of the 80s generation and brought with him a whole crew of youngish policy types, to me it seems like he has never really built a party power base to rival established factions. I find it noticeable in that context, that talk about an Oyun-Erdene faction is rare, even under some fanciful name. And perhaps this is also why there has been so much speculation about Oyun-Erdene’s relationship with Khurelsukh as his own position within the part may have depended on Khurelsukh very much along the way.
If my impression of the lack of a real powerbase for Oyun-Erdene is right, perhaps he will simply fade away, along with Vision 2050, having completed a relatively long and largely successful term. That success I would point to has included steering the country through much of the COVID pandemic and signing another OT agreement that has led to the cancellation of some debt. Or, he might reinvent himself as an MPP power broker in coming months.
