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The chaos theory of Mongolia

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,...
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Election Disputes Continue

I hear Dornod Aimag's election committee chair has ordered a vote recount.

Meanwhile, it is now the MPRP candidates accusing the Democrats of election fraud.
N.Udval, an MPRP candidate, claims election fraud by the DP candidates at Arkhangai Aimag. What happened to "according to international observers, the elections were fair and clean"? Now that even the winning party's candidates are blowing the whistle on election fraud due to their individual losses, perhaps it's time to have a good look at the system that allows for illegal / unethical pre-election campaign methods. While the main dispute at the moment is focused on the election results and not the campaign methods, surely the campaign methods influence election results, as Mr.Udval claims.

News.mn has published the membership % of all election committees here, which shows approximately 50/50 split between the DP and MPRP across all committees. Each committee is made up of 11 members, and in most cases majority of the seats on these committees were allocated 50/50 to DP-MPRP people. So what do these figures and disputed election results mean? That election fraud was impossible given the balanced representation across all committees? Or does it mean DP reps on these committees sold their party out?

The Human Rights subcommittee held an open and confrontational meeting with the police chiefs to discuss the role of the police force during the riots. Head of the Central Police Bureau, General Ch.Amarbold has stated that out of 2,200 policemen stationed in the city, 1,300 were deployed to the riot scenes. The subcommittee members pressed Mr.Amarbold on indiscriminate arrests of citizens and other issues related to police misconduct during and after the riots. The General stormed out of the meeting when the subcommittee members, including MP E.Bat-Uul, questioned his competency as a leader of the police force.

266 remain in the detention centres, of which 236 are men and 6 are women. The remaining 24 are reported to be underaged. No information on whether criminal charges are being pressed.

Around 200 international journalists have cancelled their scheduled visits to Mongolia to cover the Naadam festival. Bummer. Quiet Naadam indeed.
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