Mongolia's Obama?

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Meet Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, Mongolia's new president. He sounds familiar.

By Mitch Moxley — Special to GlobalPost

Published: May 26, 2009 17:42 ET

ULAN BATOR, Mongolia — See if this rings a bell: A young, renowned Democratic Party orator and Harvard graduate champions change and wins the presidency based on broad support in urban areas.

Meet Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, Mongolia’s Obama. Sort of.

In the nascent democracy’s fifth presidential election, Mongolians on Sunday chose Elbegdorj, 46, over incumbent Nambaryn Enkhbayar of the Mongolia People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP). Elbegdorj, who had been blamed for inciting deadly riots last year after calling the parliamentary election rigged, adopted Obama’s mantra of “change” and leveled corruption allegations against his rival. Enkhbayar’s followers, meanwhile, said Elbegdorj was part Chinese. Sound familiar?

Voters, frustrated by government incompetence, didn’t buy it. The landlocked nation of 3 million voted for Elbegdorj by a margin of 4 percent (he garnered 51 percent of the vote).

So is he really Mongolia’s Obama?

“We’ll see,” said T. Tselmeg, a producer for a national television station (who like many Mongolians goes by her given name), moments after Elbegdorj delivered a fiery speech on Monday in Ulan Bator’s Sukhbaatar square, at the foot of a huge statue of Genghis Kahn. “The people here aren’t necessarily for Elbegdorj. They want change.”

Truth be told, Elbegdorj is hardly the face of change. He’s a two-time former prime minister and has been a prominent figure in Mongolian politics since 1990, when he helped lead a peaceful revolution that ended 70 years of communist rule. But in a country with a serious lack of faith in government and the electoral process, the biggest winner of this year’s presidential election was perhaps democracy itself.

“We did much better this year,” said Dagva Enkhtsetseg, program manager for the Open Society Forum, which coordinated 49 domestic election supervisors and found no major irregularities. “A lot of people lost hope in our democratic future. People were anxious this time. ‘Will it work?’ And it did work.”

It was a much different story less than a year ago, when after a disputed parliamentary election several hundred Democratic Party supporters took to the streets. In the ensuing vodka-fueled riots, five people were killed and the MPRP’s headquarters was scorched.

To prevent another outbreak of violence, the government on Sunday banned public gatherings, suspended alcohol sales and beefed up police presence. New measures were adopted to prevent voting irregularities, including special voter cards.