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Hard Times on the Democratic Steppes
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20055 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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12 / 1992 |
1,985 Words |
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Michael McNierney
Michael McNierney is a haiku poet and free-lance
writer/photographer living in Boulder, Colorado. |
In the fall of 1990, I traveled halfway across the Mongolian People's Republic, from Ulan Bator to Khovd, on Miat, the Mongolian state airline. This past summer, less than two years later, friends of mine trekked roughly the same route through the Mongolian Republic on the ground--over dirt roads at best and rocky tracks at worst.
Many things had changed between our trips, among them two: People had been dropped from the country's name as being too redolent of communism, and there was no aviation fuel for internal flights.
In 1987, the government announced its commitment to iltod (Mongolian for glasnost). In December 1989, in the frigid Ulan Bator winter, intellectuals and students staged a demonstration demanding human rights and a more democratic government. Far from suppressing the movement for democracy as did the Chinese government the previous June in Tiananmen Square, the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) dismissed President Batmonkh from the Politburo and expelled Tsedenbal, Mongolia's ruler for more than 30 years, who had been deposed in 1984. In March 1990, the party elected a new central committee that voiced support for democracy, human rights, religious freedom, and a market economy. A new president, Punsalmaagiyn Orchirbat, was chosen to execute the new resolutions.
Between March 1990 and the elections of June 1992, Mongolia forged ahead with changes and reforms with a ferocity that would have been the envy of Genghis Khan. The Mongolian people, removed from the country's name, received total religious freedom, almost complete freedom of speech and press, a stock exchange, and shares in the private but previously government-owned industries. They also received, in January 1992, a new constitution modeled to some extent on the U.S. Constitution. In addition to striking the communist star from the national flag and restructuring the legislature, it guarantees individual rights, including the right to own property, and lists the government's obligations in the areas of education, employment, medical care, and the environment. The MPRP disavowed its Marxist ideology and reaffirmed its dedication to traditional Mongolian values; as a side effect, Genghis Khan, long persona non grata under the communists, again became an acceptable national hero.
The Western democracies have been full of praise for the Mongols. Then, in the June 1992 elections, the MPRP won a landslide victory, taking 71 of the 76 seats in the Great Hural. What
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