I've mentioned before the subject of corruption in Mongolian public life - from government through hospitals to the police force - and the general perception that it is widespread and inescapable. Last year a bill passed through parliament established the IAAC - the Independent Authority Against Corruption. Public officials are now required by law to register their earnings and other financial interests and those of their families. The figures that have come in now that the majority of officials have complied with that requirement (and published in last week's UB Post) prove interesting reading. There's a law which according to the Post "does not allow MPs to have a private business entity", so how do the country's 76 monkeys manage to get by?
The returned figures show how progressive Mongolia's MPs are in promoting women's rights, against a culture which generally puts women in second place: the majority of MPs earn less than than their wives. Considerably less in many cases. Prime Minister Enkhbold earned a very modest 3.2 million Tugrik - around $3,000 - last year, while the Prime Minister's wife brought home Tg24.2 million. L. Gundalai MP, chairman of the Popular Party, registered his earnings at Tg3 million , Mrs L. Gundalai is doing a bit better with Tg74 million, although even her paycheck doesn't seem to account for how the minister acquired his Toyota Landcruiser, Mercedes Benz, six motor boats, three horses and Tg500 million of shares in the SOS Medica Hospital. I guess, contrary to the general economic trend in the country, 2006/7 was a lean year for MPs. B. Erdenbat has the pretty thankless task of Minister of Fuel and Energy, earning him a paltry Tg3.2 million. His immediate family managed to improve on this with Tg66.3 million. And I guess if times get hard he can always fall back on his Tg17.2 billion worth of shares in Erel bank, Erel Insurance and assorted companies or sell one of his two Mercedes Benz 500s, or his Lexus 470 jeep, two Land Cruiser 100L jeeps or maybe one of his pair of Hummers.
Well, the list goes on (Supreme Court judge A. Batsaikhan has 20 pigs) and can be seen on the UB Post's website. It's interesting reading, and clearly shows that the law against MPs owning businesses is not achieving much.
In President Enkhbayar's case, the declared earnings provide more food for thought - he earned Tg121.9 million, owns a Tg35 million apartment, and aparently his family earned nothing. To quote the Post "He does not own any mining license, savings, land, credit, debt, shares, automobile, or commercial property." I don't think that many people in Mongolia believe a word of that, but (if only because of his good taste in translating Rudyard Kipling and Virginia Woolf into Mongolian) I'd like to believe in his honesty and probity. Of course he doesn't have to declare how many of his cousins and friends are doing very well indeed thankyou, and I shouldn't think that he'll do too badly in retirement. The real test is what he achieves in his job. The President has been a prominent supporter of anti-corruption laws - now that those laws are revealing to the public the extent of the problem (if largely by inference), what Mongolia needs to see now is action to correct this. Otherwise the cynicism with which government and indeed democracy are viewed will surely grow.
Showing posts with label Enkhbayar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enkhbayar. Show all posts
Friday, 10 August 2007
Wednesday, 18 April 2007
Enkhbayar, Leeds University, Marmite
Wednesday 18th April
Trawling the net (pretty much unsuccessfully) for any news of President Enkhbayar's current visit to the UK, I did at least stumble across this interview on the Leeds University website which took place during Enkhbayar's last visit to the UK.
He speaks very enthusiastically about his time in Leeds (which was in 1986 rather than the 1990s as Wikipedia led me to misinform you), how he loved the access he had to the University library which enabled him for the first time to read the works of "Soviet dissidents and European intellectuals". He translated into Mongolian short stories by Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling and - his particular favourite - Aldous Huxley.
"My time at Leeds was a time of reflection. It opened my eyes, and helped me to embrace the changes that happened to my country in 1990[...] And Leeds is the city where I discovered Marmite."
Trawling the net (pretty much unsuccessfully) for any news of President Enkhbayar's current visit to the UK, I did at least stumble across this interview on the Leeds University website which took place during Enkhbayar's last visit to the UK.
He speaks very enthusiastically about his time in Leeds (which was in 1986 rather than the 1990s as Wikipedia led me to misinform you), how he loved the access he had to the University library which enabled him for the first time to read the works of "Soviet dissidents and European intellectuals". He translated into Mongolian short stories by Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling and - his particular favourite - Aldous Huxley.
"My time at Leeds was a time of reflection. It opened my eyes, and helped me to embrace the changes that happened to my country in 1990[...] And Leeds is the city where I discovered Marmite."
Wednesday, 11 April 2007
Enkhbayar, 76 Monkeys go "Blah, blah"
Wednesday 11th April
I heard the rain falling against my window last night, a sound I last heard more than four months ago.
President Enkhbayar will be visiting Britain on 17-18th April, so be on the lookout for reports of him describing Britain as Mongolia’s “Third Neighbour”. Actually, on his last visit to the UK he was described as an anglophile in the press, which may not be an exaggeration: apparently he has translated works by Dickens, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf into Mongolian. Indeed, according to his Wikipedia entry, Enkhbayar studied literature at Leeds in the 1990s. I wonder if he was at any of the parties I stumbled into in Headingley around that time?
Enkhbayar’s a curious figure in Mongolian politics: a man who seems to have quite an air of dignity and trustworthiness about him. I’m not aware of him being directly linked with any of the many scandals and irregularities reported in the press and gossiped on the streets, but I haven’t heard anyone speak with much enthusiasm about him. The most usual comment, spoken perhaps with feelings of having been betrayed, is that he is more concerned to look after himself and his family than his country.
I had a very successful class with my evening college students recently, working on Very Short Stories, as published in WIRED magazine and posted about some time earlier in this blog. The students as previously seemed to really enjoy the exercise (although were universally baffled by the WIRED offerings) and came up with some pretty good ones: “Iceberg hits; he drowns: she lives.”(Titanic, of course) and “76 Monkeys go ‘Blah, blah.’” Apparently there are 76 members of government (or parliament, I’m not sure which), and that is how they are collectively known.
I heard the rain falling against my window last night, a sound I last heard more than four months ago.
President Enkhbayar will be visiting Britain on 17-18th April, so be on the lookout for reports of him describing Britain as Mongolia’s “Third Neighbour”. Actually, on his last visit to the UK he was described as an anglophile in the press, which may not be an exaggeration: apparently he has translated works by Dickens, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf into Mongolian. Indeed, according to his Wikipedia entry, Enkhbayar studied literature at Leeds in the 1990s. I wonder if he was at any of the parties I stumbled into in Headingley around that time?
Enkhbayar’s a curious figure in Mongolian politics: a man who seems to have quite an air of dignity and trustworthiness about him. I’m not aware of him being directly linked with any of the many scandals and irregularities reported in the press and gossiped on the streets, but I haven’t heard anyone speak with much enthusiasm about him. The most usual comment, spoken perhaps with feelings of having been betrayed, is that he is more concerned to look after himself and his family than his country.
I had a very successful class with my evening college students recently, working on Very Short Stories, as published in WIRED magazine and posted about some time earlier in this blog. The students as previously seemed to really enjoy the exercise (although were universally baffled by the WIRED offerings) and came up with some pretty good ones: “Iceberg hits; he drowns: she lives.”(Titanic, of course) and “76 Monkeys go ‘Blah, blah.’” Apparently there are 76 members of government (or parliament, I’m not sure which), and that is how they are collectively known.
Saturday, 10 March 2007
Mongolia's 'Third Neighbour', Golden Arches
Saturday 10th March
Another glorious sunny day out there. A fortnight ago we had a freak tropical heatwave in UB - the day time temperature was ABOVE freezing: rumour has it that the thermometer reached +5c. This was followed by snow, and the temperature dropped again; ups and downs, however, have ensured that the snow turned to slush and then ice. There's been markedly less air pollution: presumably because there is some air movement with an icy wind building up now and then. When I arrived in December the cold was steady and constant, and the rule was simple: wrap up as warm as you could. Now I'm forever getting caught out - either wearing too heavy a coat and over-heating, or deciding not to wear long johns and ending up wondering whether I'll make it back home before the arteries in my legs freeze solid.
Mongolia's charismatic and hard-working President N. Enkhbayar (furthermore, Wikipedia informs, a former Leeds University student) has been busy with international diplomacy over the past few weeks. At the end of February he was visiting France, discussing deals for Mongolia to supply France's future uranium needs. France has tabled and supported motions in Mongolia's favour in the European Union: Enkhbayar thanked Jacques Chirac for this support, and called the EU Mongolia's 'Third Neighbour'. Mongolia, of course, is a land-locked nation, with borders with only Russia and China, so the 'Third Neighbour' concept is rather a neat one. Indeed, as last week's UB Post observed, it's such a neat concept that Enkhbayar has also previously described the US as Mongolia's 'Third Neighbour'. Of course, it's easy to mock such self-plagiarism, with the outrage of a heckler who attends a second show on a comedian's tour, only to discover that the performer uses the same witty one-liners which had seemed so brilliantly spontaneous the first time round.
President Enkhbayar has just returned from a 5 day tour of Japan, where, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he has been discussing strengthening business ties between Mongolia and Japan; the two nations also promising to continue working together within the UN, especially concerning their commitment to 'maintain the nuclear disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation international regime' (UB Post, 8/3/07). Student exchanges, financial aid and much else will all increase. The UB Post further reports that in gratitude Enkhbayar said that "because Japan assisted Mongolia, extending a friend's hand when our country had difficult times and because Japan is an important partner which can help to fasten Mongolia's development and to strengthen our country's position in the international arena, we consider Japan as the 'third neighbour' of our country."
Elswhere in this week's Post the news is not so good for Mongolia's standing in the international community. After a survey team were sent out in the early part of the year, McDonalds have concluded that they sadly won't be opening a franchise of their delightful cultural and culinary embassies in Ulaanbaatar, owing mainly to the limited size of the population here.
Another glorious sunny day out there. A fortnight ago we had a freak tropical heatwave in UB - the day time temperature was ABOVE freezing: rumour has it that the thermometer reached +5c. This was followed by snow, and the temperature dropped again; ups and downs, however, have ensured that the snow turned to slush and then ice. There's been markedly less air pollution: presumably because there is some air movement with an icy wind building up now and then. When I arrived in December the cold was steady and constant, and the rule was simple: wrap up as warm as you could. Now I'm forever getting caught out - either wearing too heavy a coat and over-heating, or deciding not to wear long johns and ending up wondering whether I'll make it back home before the arteries in my legs freeze solid.
Mongolia's charismatic and hard-working President N. Enkhbayar (furthermore, Wikipedia informs, a former Leeds University student) has been busy with international diplomacy over the past few weeks. At the end of February he was visiting France, discussing deals for Mongolia to supply France's future uranium needs. France has tabled and supported motions in Mongolia's favour in the European Union: Enkhbayar thanked Jacques Chirac for this support, and called the EU Mongolia's 'Third Neighbour'. Mongolia, of course, is a land-locked nation, with borders with only Russia and China, so the 'Third Neighbour' concept is rather a neat one. Indeed, as last week's UB Post observed, it's such a neat concept that Enkhbayar has also previously described the US as Mongolia's 'Third Neighbour'. Of course, it's easy to mock such self-plagiarism, with the outrage of a heckler who attends a second show on a comedian's tour, only to discover that the performer uses the same witty one-liners which had seemed so brilliantly spontaneous the first time round.
President Enkhbayar has just returned from a 5 day tour of Japan, where, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he has been discussing strengthening business ties between Mongolia and Japan; the two nations also promising to continue working together within the UN, especially concerning their commitment to 'maintain the nuclear disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation international regime' (UB Post, 8/3/07). Student exchanges, financial aid and much else will all increase. The UB Post further reports that in gratitude Enkhbayar said that "because Japan assisted Mongolia, extending a friend's hand when our country had difficult times and because Japan is an important partner which can help to fasten Mongolia's development and to strengthen our country's position in the international arena, we consider Japan as the 'third neighbour' of our country."
Elswhere in this week's Post the news is not so good for Mongolia's standing in the international community. After a survey team were sent out in the early part of the year, McDonalds have concluded that they sadly won't be opening a franchise of their delightful cultural and culinary embassies in Ulaanbaatar, owing mainly to the limited size of the population here.
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