Public excluded from dialogues on constitutional amendments
Since its fall session last year, Parliament has been talking about making amendments to the Constitution, which was adopted in 1992, within this year.
In December 2016, Parliament set up a task force made up of scholars, specialists, and experienced lawyers to carry out a nation-wide poll on constitutional amendments amongst randomly selected over 700 individuals who represented Mongolian demographics to cooperate on drafting amendments to the Constitution, to organize open discussions across Mongolia to listen to people’s opinions on the draft amendments to the Constitution and other changes in constitutional amendments, and to create the final draft by consolidating the inputs gathered from all the discussions and proposals submitted to Parliament.
Parliament also instructed its standing committees to collaborate with the task force to carry out all activities on constitutional amendments, especially the organizing of open discussions.
The most important activity for amending the Constitution is open discussions, which are taking place throughout August and all Mongolian citizens are able to participate in them. But the task force and Parliament’s standing committees are not doing enough to increase public participation in discussions.
Many people don’t care about constitutional amendments because the people in charge of organizing it are not closely cooperating with government offices to raise people’s awareness to increase their participation in discussions.
The task force opened a Facebook page to get the public’s feedback on their constitutional amendments, but this page is not active like commercial and entertainment pages.
The page includes some video lessons which explain the proposed amendments to the Constitution, other videos from discussions held in provinces and districts and a timetable for discussions that will be held in districts.
In the timetable, the dates and venues to host discussions are unclear; the names of standing committees that will moderate discussions; and the schedule did not include the exact time of the discussion, with only the month and date given.
As discussions taking place in districts are a great opportunity for a citizen to directly present his or her ideas on constitutional amendments to the task force, participating in the discussions of districts or provinces are very important for the public.
When The UB Post asked the admin of the constitutional amendment Facebook page when and where exactly the open discussion for Bayanzurkh District would take place, the admin said, “Ask the government office of your khoroo about it”.
When the Bayanzurkh’s 4th khoroo government office was asked on August 9 about the venue and date of the open discussion in Bayanzurkh District, an official said that the office has not received a clear information regarding the discussions, and that they would call back with the information.
The khoroo office said that as some Members of Parliament attend the open discussions it’s difficult to arrange their time.
The constitutional amendment Facebook page made a post on August 11 that the Bayanzurkh District open discussion took place on that day. And when the khoroo was asked why they didn’t inform of the discussion’s venue and date as promised earlier, a khoroo official explained that he found out that there would be a discussion on the morning of the day of the discussion and the district’s government office called him to come to the venue of the discussion 30 minutes before it took place.
The khoroo official suggested that I participate in the open discussions in Sukhbaatar and Bayangol districts, which had not taken place.
The offices of the remaining two districts said the same thing as Bayanzurkh and could not provide a concrete time and venue for the open discussions on constitutional amendments.
Again, the constitutional amendment Facebook page said the Sukhbaatar District’s discussion took place on August 16, two days before the scheduled date provided on the Facebook page. Bayangol District hosted its discussion on August 23, a day before the scheduled time listed on the Facebook page. Both times, the Facebooks posts notifying the discussions took place had been posted after the discussions without prior notification.
When asked on the Facebook page comment section why the open discussions were not being held on the scheduled date, the page admin deleted the comment.
There are several comments enquiring about the participants of open discussions, which have been left unanswered by the page admin.
The open discussion at Bayanzurkh’s 4th khoroo was rescheduled twice, after only two participants showed up on the first attempt, and the second attempt was cancelled due to rain.
When a complaint was made to the khoroo government office, khoroo officials made an announcement about the discussion beforehand and nearly 20 people came to the citizen’s hall but the moderator of the discussion did not show up and it was cancelled.
Since participating in the discussions didn’t pan out, I tried submitting my proposal for constitutional amendments through the post office nearest to my home, but the post office said it has not received envelopes for feedback and proposals on constitutional amendments from the government and cannot receive the proposal.
Young people’s participation in discussions has been very low because all discussions took place on work days, and people who have jobs are unable to participate in these discussions. To increase public participation, Parliament should have issued an order to organize the open discussion on public holidays.
Only 170 individuals attended the open discussion in Bayangol District, which has a population of 136,000 above the age of 18; nearly 200 individuals participated in the discussion of Bayanzurkh District, which has a population of 217,000 people above the age of 18; and 235 people took part in the discussion in Sukhbaatar District, from over 91,000 people above the age of 18 who live in the district.
Public participation of the remaining six districts were similar to these three districts but more than 90 percent of people taking part in discussions were retirees and seniors above the age of 60.
As everybody who attends a discussion votes on the proposed amendments to the Constitution, seniors will determine how the Constitution will change as the draft submitted to Parliament will be made by consolidating public votes gathered from all the discussions.
This is the reality of the open discussions that were held in Ulaanbaatar, where half of the nation’s population resides.
The government has spent substantial amount of money to organize open discussions across Mongolia, but unfortunately, Parliament and Cabinet have not worked together to make discussions inclusive and effective, which means the proposed amendments will be invalid and unrepresentative of the nation’s views.