I returned to Mongolia 15 years ago after an absence of 13 years, save for the occasional 2-week leave from work, and that time I spent a semester and a half at a local university drinking endless cups of brown, watery 150 Tugrik instant MaCcoffee at the café strangely, or perhaps egotistically, named "In my memory", writing the first and so far the only book that got us into trouble with the local intelligence who apparently had little else to do than to pore through the ramblings of teenagers to catch the tell-tale signs of drug dealery. But I digress. When you visit a country for a short period, be it home or not, you hardly have time to immerse yourself in the spirit of the country and the city and feel the nitty gritty and dirty shiny of it all. So after 13 years, it took me a while to readjust and finally understand what the hometown of my childhood had become. The most striking, ubiquitous, and inescapable feature was and still, unfortunately, is the traffic. In 2008,
So in November, 2010, the MPRP or Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MAXH in Mongolian), after lengthy discussions that involved the media, the party members and the general public, changed its name to MPP or Mongolian People's Party (or МАН in Mongolian), dropping the Revolutionary from its name. Their reasoning was that Mongolian People's Party was the original name for the party at its founding in 1921, with the Revolutionary added later in 1924. There were a certain number of protesters against the name-change, with some threatening to leave the party and others, such as MPRP MP Shinebayar forming the MPRP temporary headquarters, somewhere.
Last week, ex-Prez N.Enkhbayar (whose team perhaps came up with the funniest campaign slogan in recent times: Number One Nambariin Enkhbayar for the 2009 presidential campaign) and his former MPRP colleagues held an MPRP meeting (which is not the MPP) i.e. MAXH, at Asa-circus, and decided to form a party under the old MPRP name, with N.Enkhbayar as the party chairman, and MP Ts.Shinebayar as the deputy chair. Confusion continues, as MP Shinebayar was elected from the MPP (formerly known as MPRP). With him having eloped to the neo-MPRP with N.Enkhbayar, the question remains as to whether the newly-formed MPRP can consider itself a party with a seat in the Parliament.
So as it stands: MPRP=new party with Enkhbayar at its head, MPP=former MPRP.
While Mr.Enkhbayar and co may use the MAXH acronym, it remains to be seen whether the new party will be called the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MAXH) or Mongolian Honorable Revolutionaries' Party (also MAXH in Mongolian).
No doubt it may prove beneficial to the ex-Prez to use the well-established MPRP name in the 2012 election, one that looks set to be a political comedy for the masses. With the newly-formed MPRP and the newly-renamed MPP sharing almost identical logos and similar ideologies represented by shared members in the past, N.Enkhbayar may, thanks to mirrors and red-rose smoke, be looking at another ride on the merry-go-round.
An identical situation was once depicted by the almighty Monty Python, whose wisdom I will worship to my end. Watch below for the Monty Python reenactment of what happened last week in Mongolian politics.
