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Media monitoring /2005 Presidential election/

FINAL MONITORING REPORT 2005 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

THREE: POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

3.1 RESULTS OF 2004 PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

The Mongolian Parliament, called the State Great Hural (SGH), is the supreme governing institution, with 76 members elected by citizens of 18 years and over.

In the 2004 parliamentary elections, the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) and the Motherland Democracy Coalition (MDC) won 35 seats each, and the Republican Party (RP) won one seat. The MDC comprised 3 political parties: the Democratic Party (DP), the Mother Land Party (MLP) and the Civil Will-Republican Party (CWRP). At the declaration of results, two electoral sub-districts remained in dispute. In the two months following the election, a de facto Grand Coalition government was formed after weeks of stalemate. In late December 2004, the MDC disbanded. At present, 5 political parties have seats in the SGH. Just before the presidential election, the courts gave a decision on electoral district #56, awarding the seat to J. Gurgagchaa, the MPRP candidate, so giving his party one more seat in the SGH. The dispute over the result in electoral district #25 in Ovorkhangai aimag is still before the courts.

Number of seats in SGH

PS: * One seat still in dispute.

Before the official campaign for the presidential election, it was clear that the political parties with seats in the SGH would nominate separate candidates.

3.2: 2005 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN

During the process of selection of candidates by the political parties, the Mongolian media was speculating on potential candidates. Among them were Prime Minister Ts. Elbergdorj; Parliamentary Speaker N. Enkhbayar; Deputy Prime Minister Ch.Ulaan; MP S. Gonchigdorj, and MP M. Enkhsaikhan. According to the media, N. Enkhbayar and M. Enkhsaikhan were the most likely main contestants for the presidential election.

The Mongolian media paid close attention to the congresses of the political parties. The processes of registration of the candidates by the General Election Committe (GEC) and anouncement of candidate platforms were widely covered by the media.

Before the parties announced their candidates, the media gave a great deal of coverage to N. Enkhbayar, both as Parliamentary Speaker and as the potential MPRP candidate. A negative tone dominated in this coverage, particularly by the Healthy Society citizens movement and at other public meetings and demonstrations.

Candidate nominations opened on March 22, 2005. Four political parties with seats in parliament nominated candidates; the only other party with parliamentary representation – CWRP – did not, and declined to express support for any of the candidates.

The Mongolian Traditional United Party, which has no seats in parliament, announced support for the MLP candidate.

Four candiates were registrated with the GEC and received approval to contest to the Presidentail elections. GEC organised 30 local electoral comissions, 329 subsidiry electoral commissions, and 1,631 divsion electoral commissions.

Candidates for the presidential election:

The Mongolian media reported that the main contenders were N. Enkhbyar and M. Enkhsaikhan.

Several opinion polls were conducted by Sant Maral, Prognoz, the International Republican Institute (IRI) and others before and during the election campaign. These made it clear that the public also considering the main contenders to be N. Enkhbyar and M. Enkhsaikhan.

The three institutions ran opinion polls involving the following nunber of the voters:

Sant Maral 1,747
Prognoz 6,336
IRI 1,800

Results of opinion polls (%)

The Mongolian media reported widely on the results of public opinion polls and the Ardyn Erkh daily newspaper published the results of its own opinion polls run in cooperation with the Academy of Political Education.

•  POLLING DAY

Voting in the presidential election was held on May 22, 2005, when 927,679 (74.92%) of the 1,238,250 registered voters attended the polls, with 915,631 valid votes.

N. Enkhbayar, the MPRP candidate, received 53.46% of the votes; M. Enkhsaikhan (DP) received 19.73%, B. Jargalsaikhan (RP) won 13.94% and B. Erdenebat (MLP) received 11.51%.

Results of the presidential election

The voting and election results were widely covered by the media. TV9 and Eagle TV reported on the results of electoral districts and sub-districts and other TV channels and Mongolian National Radio carried results in their main news programs every hour.