Sat, Jun 26, 2004 page5

• Mongolian MPRP `will win' poll

  ARROGANCE With the election still two days off, the rich ruling party was already celebrating, while the opposition ran a deliberately low-key campaign

  • REUTERS
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  The Mongolian People's Revolu-tionary Party (MPRP), recovering from a glitzy overnight rally starring rap singers and dancers, yesterday expressed high hopes it would be re-elected tomorrow after providing four years of stability.

  The MPRP has 72 seats in the 76-seat "Great Hural," or parliament, and is widely expected to be returned to power in one of the world's poorest and most sparsely populated countries, probably losing just a handful of seats to a divided opposition.

  "Of course we will win," said MPRP political official Enkhtoer on Friday. "I am confident we will get the vast majority of seats."

  

  A worker decorates a lamppost before an election campaign rally held by the ruling Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, on Thursday.

  PHOTO: REUTERS

  At the campaign rally on Thursday featuring fireworks, balloons and a military band, Prime Minister Nambaryn Enkhbayar, campaigning on a platform of creating jobs, boosting growth and eliminating poverty in the land of nomadic herders, said the MPRP would solve the country's ills.

  "Nothing is missing in our election program," he told thousands of party faithful. "The MPRP can solve all problems in our society today."

  The opposition Motherland Democratic Coalition, without the funds of the MPRP, has run a deliberately low-key campaign and decried the government for wasting money on rallies, banners and television campaigning.

  "We really cannot predict what the result will be," said coalition election campaign official Gantulga. "We'll get some seats but it is difficult at this point to say how many."

  Analysts say the opposition will win some votes in protest against the perceived arrogance of the MPRP but that the coalition has no clear policy.

  Ulan Bator has not exactly been grabbed by election fever but the MPRP, which ruled for 75 years until 1996 -- most of that time as a one-party Soviet satellite -- has erected billboards and posters around the city targeting youth.

  Its banners show young, smiling families and promise the creation of 145,000 new jobs.

  The party, which sent 180 troops to Iraq as part of the US-led coalition force, is also campaigning for "increased global security."

  "I am afraid that the MPRP will get the majority again and then our freedoms will be restricted for another four years," said Naraa on the streets of the capital.

  The MPRP returned to power in 2000 on a wave of popular anger against the bitterly divided Democratic Union coalition government and economic austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund.

  Since then, opposition politicians have accused the MPRP of using its overwhelming majority in the Great Hural to curb media freedoms and soft-pedal on economic reforms, charges the government has denied.

  Enkhbayar, whose biggest achievement was the cancellation of 98 percent of Mongolia's Soviet-era debt, conceded last week that four years of MPRP rule had not succeeded in eliminating poverty.

  But he said the country, half the size of Western Europe but with a population of only a third of Hong Kong, had endured three devastating winters, three years of drought and three years of falling cashmere, copper and gold prices -- its staple products.

  Zavkhlant, a businessman sitting in an open-air restaurant in the capital, said the opposition could win as many as 26 seats in parliament if voters hold their nerve.

  "There are prospects for more seats if people's sentiment stays the same for the next few days," he said.

  About half Mongolia's 2.7 million population are Nomads, with tens of millions of cattle, sheep, horses and camels grazing the vast meadows that cover four-fifths of the country, once the center of one of the world's greatest empires.

  The results of tomorrow's election are expected early on Monday.
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