What awaits us after May 25?

The 2019 amendments to the Constitution of Mongolia will come into effect next Monday, May 25. One major provision in the amendments that has been a source of much debate and dispute is the one that permits four members of Cabinet, besides the prime minister, to hold dual post in Parliament and Cabinet.

Right now, 15 ministers in the Cabinet, all except the prime minister, are members of Parliament, and lawyers, academics and opposition parties have been quick to point that with the enforcement of the new Constitution, Prime Minister U.Khurelsukh will either have to “strip” 11 ministers of their title or Cabinet as a whole will need to step down.

Responding to this assertion, Speaker of Parliament G.Zandanshatar said the Law on the Implementation of the Amendments to the Constitution, which accompanies the amendments to the Constitution, states that the current Cabinet will not have to resign or make changes, and will be allowed to resume operations normally until the June election. But lawyers and academics point out that organic laws, such as the one mentioned by the speaker, do not trump the Constitution, and that all laws in Mongolia must comply with the Constitution for them to be valid.

And so we face a dilemma.

What shall become of Cabinet after May 25, especially given the fact the Prime Minister and Head of the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP) U.Khurelsukh faces opposition from within his own party? When the previous MPP Cabinet under former Prime Minister J.Erdenebat was ousted in 2017, 72 members of Parliament participated in the nonconfidence vote, with 42 members voting for the Cabinet’s dismissal. Out of the 42, 33 members were from MPP, suggesting that 31 MPP lawmakers didn’t support the U.Khurelsukhbacked campaign to dismantle J.Erdenebat’s Cabinet. This is an extremely narrow margin illustrating the division within MPP. Thereafter followed a lengthy political squabble over the formation of U.Khurelsukh’s Cabinet, and in the end, the prime minister “let in” many of the “old crowd” within MPP to support his rule over the dominant political party and thus secured his claim on Cabinet. But even this didn’t stop 27 members of Parliament petitioning for the dissolution of U.Khurelsukh’s Cabinet in November 2018, which the prime minister managed to plow through, but only just.

The way things are going now, Prime Minister U.Khurelsukh will have to face some tough choices post May 25. He could ignore the changes in the Constitution and run his government as normal by riding on the back of the constitutional amendments implementation law. But this risks a constitutional crisis, putting the Cabinet’s legitimacy on the line and could lead to the ousting of Cabinet right as the elections come rolling by.

Another choice is to oust Cabinet altogether and form a new one, which is time consuming and rather pointless since the elections are due within a couple of weeks from the formation of the new Cabinet, which would have to be dethroned again post elections.

By far the most difficult choice would be to have 11 ministers within his Cabinet resign to comply with the Constitution. This will no doubt destabilize U.Khurelsukh’s position in his own party and bring about the risk that the 11 ousted exCabinet members joining forces with the 27 lawmakers who tried to overthrow his back in 2018 to bring down the prime minister through a Parliament no confidence vote.

So how did this whole situation come about to begin with? Some pundits believe the effective date of the new Constitution was set strategically to topple U.Khurelsukh right on the cusp of the election by the old crowd in MPP rather than an oversight by those who drafted the amendments. The speculation goes that the Constitutional amendments drafted by the task force headed by the longest serving lawmaker in Parliament D.Lundeejantsan, who also had a hand in drafting the original Constitution, dangled provisions giving more power to the prime minister in the amendment draft in front of U.Khurelsukh to distract him from the plot to overthrow him using the strategic setting of the new Constitution’s effective date. Pundits believe that a shrewd politician like D.Lundeejantsan wouldn’t make such a grave “error” that could lead to destabilization of Cabinet without being “in on it”.

Plots and ploys aside, the last thing Mongolia needs right now is political instability, what with the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, upcoming hefty government bond repayments, elections, mass unemployment, and other critical economic and social problems. In the 2019 World Bank Enterprise Survey, which identifies constraints in the business environment of a given country, 35.2 percent of the 360 Mongolian businesses that took the survey identified political instability as the biggest obstacle for them, far ahead of tax rates (17.2 percent), access to finance (15.9 percent), and corruption (9.1 percent).

Still, there may be a simple and elegant solution to the dilemma Prime Minister U.Khurelsukh will have to face next week when the new Constitution comes in effect. Who would have thought that the possible solution to a dilemma which might bring about a political “killing spree”, as some pundits put it, would be offhandedly dropped in an interview by prominent business and political figure B.Jargalsaikhan when he said that an acting Cabinet may be appointed until the election. Just changing the status of the current Cabinet to an “acting” one seems to be the least intrusive and disruptive solution, given the fact that the other choices risk either a Constitutional crisis or further political instability.

All things considered, whichever way events unfold after May 25, the sun will still rise from the east and set in the west. What’s important for us, the “ordinary” people of Mongolia, is that we still have the chance to make extraordinary impact by choosing to vote responsibly and participate in the democratic process that allows us to safeguard our rights and hold accountability to those in power.

...we still have the chance to make extraordinary impact by choosing to vote...