The ruling Mongolian People's Party is expected to win another term despite concerns about its government.
Polls have opened in Mongolia, where the ruling Mongolian People's Party (MPP) is widely expected to claim victory despite growing public anger over corruption and the state of the economy.
Voters across the vast nation, sandwiched between China and Russia, are electing 126 members to an expanded state Great Khural, the country's parliament.
Polling stations opened at 7:00 a.m. local time (23:00 GMT on Thursday) and will close at 22:00 (14:00 GMT). Preliminary results are expected to be known in the coming hours as a result of the automatic vote recount.
Prime Minister Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene's MPP won a landslide victory in the last election in 2020, but there is growing frustration over endemic corruption, the high cost of living and a lack of opportunities for young people, who make up nearly two-thirds of the population.
Enkhmandakh Boldbaatar, a 38-year-old voter from the outskirts of the capital, Ulaanbaatar, said he did not vote for either the MPP or the main opposition party, the Democratic Party, and that they had not done well either. There are 19 parties competing for seats in parliament.
“I have been living here for 38 years, but the area is still the same,” Boldbaatar told the Associated Press news agency. “Only this road and a few buildings were built. Things would have been different if they had worked for the people.”
The center-right anti-corruption party HUN is expected to increase its seats thanks to its professional, social media-savvy candidates who enjoy significant support among the urban middle classes.
“I think young people are more aware of the activities of political parties,” Norovbanzad Ganbat, a 24-year-old computer scientist, told AFP news agency. “They can see what the MPP has done in the past four years. That's why young people don't vote for this party.”
Fears of a 'dictatorship'
Mongolia has dropped five spots to 33rd out of 100 on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index and is now ranked 121st out of 180 countries and territories on the list.
It has also fallen in press freedom rankings under MPP, and activists say there has been a notable decline in the rule of law.
Taking to the stage at a rally on Wednesday, Oyun-Erdene blamed his political opponents for turning Mongolia into a “land of corrupt leaders” and called for a return to “discipline.”
A poll by the Sant Maral Foundation, Mongolia's main independent electoral body, suggested that more than a third of Mongolians believe the country is “turning into a dictatorship.”
The streets of Ulaanbaatar, home to nearly half of Mongolia's 3.4 million people, have been adorned with colorful campaign signs promoting candidates across the political spectrum, from populist businessmen to nationalists, environmentalists and socialists.
For the first time in almost a decade, parties are required by law to ensure that 30 percent of their candidates are women.
Former President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, who held office for the opposition Democratic Party between 2009 and 2017, celebrated the start of the election on Friday morning, writing: “As the Mongolian saying goes, 'it is better to live by your own choices than by the choices of others.'”
“There are around 260 foreign observers and three dozen journalists present. I expect genuinely democratic and transparent elections,” he added.
Mongolia became a democracy in 1990, ending more than six decades of communist rule.
In addition to corruption, which has sparked waves of protests in recent years, the main issues for voters include unemployment and inflation in an economy shaken first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then by the fallout from the war in Ukraine. . The country's livestock herders were also hit this year by a “dzud,” a combination of extreme cold and drought, which killed millions of animals.
