Mongolia's former communists met yesterday to discuss who should become the next prime minister after the central Asian country was thrown into disarray with the ouster of reform-minded Tsakhia Elbegdorj.
About 250 members of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) gathered in central Ulan Bator to choose a candidate to lead the impoverished, landlocked nation, a party official said.
"They will discuss whom to nominate as the next prime minister," the official said, a leading member of the party's youth organization. He said the talks began shortly before 4pm.
The most likely choice was MPRP chairman Miyegombo Enkhbold, a former mayor of the capital, where nearly half the country's 2.5 million people live, several observers said.
"He's a good man. He's got good organizational skills and very important experience," said MPRP member Kulalsuk as he arrived for the meeting at party headquarters.
Mongolia's political system was thrown into upheaval after lengthy parliamentary debates late on Friday culminated in a vote approving the resignation of 10 Cabinet members, all from the MPRP.
With just eight cabinet members remaining, this effectively sealed the ouster of Elbegdorj, whose Democratic Party advocates liberal market reform in Mongolia.
The political constellation was such that a new government was all but certain to be formed by the MPRP with the support of smaller parties.
"This is the right time to start in our own direction," said Sansar Jiimen, a 30-year-old software engineer and a member of the MPRP's youth organization.
"We will pay more attention to social issues and look after poor people," he said.
The decision to topple the government "has immediately created a dangerous situation in our country," Elbegdorj said early yesterday, just moments after the parliamentary vote had reduced him to acting prime minister.
"I think this is short-sighted, and a wrong move by the Mongolian Communists," said Elbegdorj, a Harvard graduate.
The MPRP and the Democrats have co-ruled since 2004, when they were forced into an uneasy coalition after an election that divided the parliamentary seats almost evenly between the two.
In an agreement between the sides, Elbegdorj was handed the prime minister's office in exchange for giving the MPRP 10 of the 18 cabinet seats.
Elbegdorj was only to have held the premiership until this autumn, at which time it would have been taken over by the MPRP, according to observers.
"Everyone asks the question why they couldn't wait for these few months," Elbegdorj said. "My theory is that they felt threatened by my plans to pursue action for combating corruption."
Sanjaasuren Oyun, the leader of the Civil Will Party, said it was a wrong move to oust the government.
"Although the coalition couldn't do the reforms very fast, they had an ambitious reform-minded platform," she said.
"Slowly, they were moving forward with tax reform, with election reform," she added.
Mongolia, most famous for its past under fearless warlord Genghis Khan, has been praised as one of the few central Asian states to have enjoyed a relatively stable democracy following the fall of the Soviet Union.
It has also been an ally of the US, and sent a small but symbolically significant military deployment to help the US-led forces in Iraq.
The MPRP enjoyed nearly 70 years of single-party rule when Mongolia was a Soviet satellite, and has maintained significant clout since democracy was introduced in the early 1990s.
It won 72 of the 76 parliamentary seats in 2000 but was forced into the latest coalition after an electoral backlash to its dominance at the 2004 polls.
With support for Elbegdorj's Democratic Party falling to just 26 seats following the break up of its own "Democratic Coalition" last year, the MPRP decided to take full control.
"The democrats believe the 2004 vote was rigged and think they should have won the election," said a foreign observer in Ulan Bator. "So now they think they've lost twice, and they're angry."
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS