Martial arts expert leads Mongolia presidential election

ULAN BATOR: A brash businessman with martial arts skills was leading Mongolia’s first-ever presidential runoff election early yesterday after a scandal-plagued race to take the helm of the resource-rich but debt-laden country.

Khaltmaa Battulga of the opposition Democratic Party (DP), a 54-year-old former world champion in the Soviet martial art Sambo, had 50.7 per cent of the vote with 87 per cent of ballots counted, according to the General Election Commission.

“Mongolia has won,” Battulga said at a press conference, though the commission will announce the winner later on Saturday. “I will start work straight away to resolve the economic difficulties and make Mongolians debt free as I promised.”

Parliament speaker Mieygombo Enkhbold of the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), which holds the majority in the legislature, was behind with 41 per cent.

Some 8.3 per cent of the votes were blank ballots.

Many voters in the vast nation of three million people sandwiched between Russia and China were so fed up with their politicians that they launched a campaign to submit unmarked ballots.

A candidate must win more than 50 per cent of the votes to be declared the winner. If neither candidate reaches this number, the parties are required to nominate different representatives for an entirely new election.

The new president will inherit a US$5.5 billion International Monetary Fund-led bailout designed to stabilise its economy and lessen its dependence on China, which purchases 80 per cent of Mongolian exports.

The former Soviet satellite’s economy grew by a measly one per cent last year, a stark contrast from an impressive 17 per cent in 2011.

It has been hit hard by a more than 50 per cent fall in the price of copper, its main export, over the past five years, while slowing growth in its biggest customer China has hobbled the economy.

Battulga, a real estate tycoon whose company funded a massive 4.1 million statue of emperor Genghis Khan, has pledged to tap the country’s mining wealth to get Mongolians out of debt.

The outgoing president, Tsakhia Elbegdorj of Battulga’s Democratic Party, did not run because he served the maximum two four-year terms.

Battulga’s lead shows that voters were ‘looking to balance’ the MPP’s dominance of parliament and the presidency, said Julian Dierkes, a Mongolia scholar at the University of British Columbia. — AFP