[Battulga, 55, rose from poverty to the country’s highest post, leapfrogging from a sambo wrestling world championship to a successful business career, but his power as president is limited — parliament and the prime minister’s job are in the hands of a rival political party. Battulga has an important role in setting foreign policy, but his ambitions are much grander.]
By
Simon Denyer
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Battulga, center, attends
a book exhibition in Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar.
(Giulia Marchi for The
Washington Post)
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ARVAIKHEER,
Mongolia — On the vast
Mongolian steppe, birthplace of Genghis Khan, a strong man has arisen.
Literally. Mongolia’s President Khaltmaa Battulga is a former world martial
arts champion who still trains regularly, a friend of Russia’s Vladimir Putin
and a business tycoon with a tough-guy image.
He is also a nationalist and something of a
populist. Battulga swept into office last year by casting himself as a
Trump-like outsider, a champion of the poor taking on a corrupt and
self-serving political elite.
Like the U.S. president, this is a man who
says he always wins, whose campaign motto was “Mongolia will win.” But he is
now wrestling with the challenge of his life.
Mongolians overthrew an authoritarian
communist regime in 1990 in a peaceful democratic revolution. Nearly three
decades of democracy have fostered progress but also glaring inequality,
leaving nearly 30 percent of the population in poverty. Corruption is rampant,
the dark side of the country’s huge reserves of copper, coal and gold.
“I asked before the election and I am still
asking,” the gruff-voiced Battulga told a town hall meeting in Arvaikheer in
central Mongolia last month. “Why are the people of a country so rich in
resources still so poor?”
Battulga, 55, rose from poverty to the
country’s highest post, leapfrogging from a sambo wrestling world championship
to a successful business career, but his power as president is limited —
parliament and the prime minister’s job are in the hands of a rival political
party. Battulga has an important role in setting foreign policy, but his
ambitions are much grander.
For the past three months, he has been
touring Mongolia, holding town hall meetings in every one of the nation’s 21
provinces, asking for popular support in his battle to improve the way his
country is governed.
“Do you get the feeling the president we
chose is on his own?” he asked hundreds of people packed into a theater here.
“It is time to start talking about president plus who? President plus the
people, working together.”
Luvsandendev Sumati, director of the
independent Sant Maral polling organization, underscores the parallels between
the most recent Mongolian and U.S. presidential elections.
After the dirtiest presidential contest in
Mongolia’s history, he said, many people stayed away or cast blank ballots in
protest. In the end, though, Battulga’s anti-establishment status outweighed
questions about his business record and past corruption allegations.
“The poor decided he is their president, and
once people decide that, they forgive you everything,” Sumati said.
“Anti-establishment politicians are taking over the globe. Why should Mongolia
be any different?”
This is the most sparsely populated country
in the world, the size of Texas, California and Montana combined but home to
just 3 million people, living in the giant shadows of Russia to the north and
China to the south. Culturally, it remains closer to its northern neighbor, but
economically it is dependent on its booming southern neighbor, with more than
80 percent of its exports flowing there.
Distrust of China runs high here, however,
and Battulga exploited that to portray himself as a pro-Moscow, anti-Beijing
candidate during the campaign. As president, though, he takes a more pragmatic
approach, saying that Mongolia should be friends with both countries while
“re-balancing” to reduce China’s trade dominance.
A former president of Mongolia’s judo
association, he shares a love of wrestling, and a friendship, with Putin.
“Because we both practiced judo, it is easier
for us to communicate,” he said in an interview, noting that Putin is also
“president of a country that has been our neighbor for thousands of years.”
But Battulga wants American support, too. In
1990, then-Secretary of States James A. Baker III pledged that the United
States would be the “third neighbor” to the newly democratic Mongolia, a pledge
repeated when President George W. Bush visited in 2005. More recently, another
secretary of state, John F. Kerry, praised Mongolia as an “oasis of democracy”
between Russia and China.
Yet U.S. defense and security ties with
Mongolia are much stronger than economic ties, which account for less than 2
percent of Mongolian trade.
“The praises of the United States that
Mongolia is ‘an oasis of democracy’ or ‘model of democracy’ have not brought
any substantial contribution to the economy,” Battulga wrote in a letter to
President Trump in December. “Discouraged by this fact, ordinary citizens of
Mongolia are losing confidence in democracy and doubting the choice of
democratic path.”
Battulga asked for improved access for
Mongolian textile exports to the United States. Trump replied that he would be
delighted to explore ways to boost trade in a “fair and equitable manner,”
according to the Mongolian presidential office.
Battulga began his business life in modest
fashion. After graduating from art school, he sold paintings to tourists in the
capital, Ulaanbaatar, before sewing and selling jeans and then trading
electronics across borders. He used the prize money and international
connections gleaned from his sambo tournaments to get his start.
A taxi service, television station and
nightclub followed, as well as a lottery business. During the privatization of
state-owned assets, he acquired controlling interests in a hotel and a
meat-processing factory. But he was also forced to flee the country for six
months after he was falsely accused of illegally importing alcohol, according
to his friend and biographer Dorjkhand Turmunkh. Another investigation into
alleged corruption followed a more recent stint as roads and transport
minister, but no charges were brought.
Battulga underlined his nationalist
credentials more than a decade ago by erecting a giant statue of Genghis Khan
on horseback in an amusement park outside the capital. He burnished his
populist credentials by pledging to use proceeds from mining to pay off
personal debts held by ordinary Mongolians.
Today, Battulga is Mongolia’s most popular
politician, Sant Maral polls show. Yet questions remain for many people: Is the
president, with his vast business empire, part of the solution or part of the
problem?
As president, he is supposed to renounce
party affiliation and unite the nation, but is his nationwide tour a genuine
attempt to raise and address problems — or an attempt to grab personal power
and campaign for his party ahead of parliamentary elections in 2020? Is he a
genuine man of the people or a wannabe strongman?
At the town hall meeting, complaints were
manifold. They included requests to repatriate offshore funds held by the
political elite and exposed in the Panama Papers, as well as pleas for better
conditions for health workers. Some railed against Chinese workers in Mongolia,
others about overcrowding in schools.
The president listened patiently for more
than an hour before blaming voters for giving the rival Mongolian People’s
Party a dominant position in 2016 parliamentary elections.
“One party got 65 out of 76 seats,” he said.
“They have all the seats, but unfortunately these past two years they didn’t do
anything.”
But at least one listener pushed back,
accusing him of being no better than his rivals.
“You are blaming voters, saying this is our
fault for electing thieves,” he said. “Look at our lives, look at the condition
our kids live in. The Chinese are the owners of Mongolia now. The country is on
the brink of disaster. I elected you. I voted for you. But Mongolia will only
‘win’ when we get rid of both these two parties.”
CORRECTION: A headline previously on this
article misidentified Khaltmaa Battulga as a former world judo champion. He is
a former world champion at the martial art sambo and former president of
Mongolia’s judo federation.
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