Mongolian Voters Expected to Give Opposition a Voice : Asia: More than 90% of those eligible go to the polls after a hard-fought but peaceful campaign.

Voters in Mongolia went to the polls Sunday in balloting expected to create an opposition voice in government for the first time in nearly seven decades of Communist rule.

Sunday’s vote, the final round of the first free elections ever held in any Asian Communist country, climaxed a hard-fought but peaceful campaign. Rock bands performed for the opposition. Men on horseback handed out leaflets at a Communist rally. Voters in many districts questioned candidates at public forums.

Both the Communists and the opposition described the elections as a major step forward for democracy, even though opposition candidates were on the ballot in fewer than half the voting districts.

“We will get so many people into Parliament that the Communists will never again be able to subject Mongolia to dictatorship and stagnation,” Sanjaasuren Zorig, head of the Mongolian Democratic Assn., the largest opposition organization in the country, declared before voting Sunday.

More than 90% of the eligible voters cast ballots, according to official figures. Ballots were to be gathered from remote areas by motorcycle and horseback, and final results were not expected for two or three days.

In the most dramatic race, Dashpuntsajyn Ganbold, a young lawyer running on the National Progress Party ticket, challenged white-haired Communist Party chief Gombojavyn Ochirbat in a suburban Ulan Bator district where most voters live in traditional Mongolian tents.

Ochirbat, 61, placed first in the July 22 preliminary round with more than 2,500 votes. Ganbold won a place in Sunday’s two-candidates-per-district runoff by placing second with about 1,300 votes. But the total opposition vote in the first round was close to Ochirbat’s total, and Ganbold was hoping for an upset with a tent-to-tent campaign. Results early today showed that he had failed, with Ochirbat winning with 3,525 votes to Ganbold’s 3,278, election officials said.

The focus of the elections is on the 430-seat People’s Great Hural, a supreme parliamentary body that elects the nation’s president. The Great Hural will also oversee creation of the 53-member Small Hural, a regularly functioning legislature. Its seats are to be allocated according to a party preference vote on Sunday’s ballot. Also facing the voters Sunday were candidates for provincial and local assemblies.

The July 22 primary guaranteed the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, as the Communists are officially known, control of the Great Hural. Of 801 candidates competing for 430 Great Hural seats Sunday, 632 were Communists, 101 came from three opposition parties and 68 ran as independents. Some districts had only one candidate.

Many independents--and two dozen or more Communists--have open ties to the opposition. It is generally believed that at least 130 candidates would probably vote with the opposition if elected.

Ochirbat and Ganbold, competing for a Great Hural seat, appeared jointly at a meet-the-candidates night Thursday.

Ochirbat, who found himself on the defensive, bluntly admitted that during its 69 years of rule, the Communist Party has “made many mistakes.” He noted that his own father was arrested in the Stalinist-style purges of the 1930s.

“But we shouldn’t just accuse the party of mistakes,” he said. “It also has done good things.”

Ochirbat, a longtime party official who became general secretary in March, insisted that he bears no responsibility for the party’s excesses. “I didn’t repress anybody,” he declared.

Ganbold, in his tent-to-tent campaigning, decried the lack of local services for the district, noting that it does not have its own school or hospital.

Voters seem to be enjoying the new political openness, an outcome of eight months of pressure from dissidents and a conciliatory response by the government.

Chuluunbelen, a long-haired 30-year-old rock musician who, like many Mongolians, usually uses just one name, told a foreign visitor that he supports the Mongolian Democratic Party because it “woke up all the Mongolian people.”

“The Democratic Party opened our eyes,” he said. “Under the influence of the democratic forces, the Revolutionary Party is trying to change. But we don’t know whether it will change all the way.”

Others believe that by its new openness, the ruling party has earned the right to continue to manage the nation’s affairs.

“The Revolutionary Party has 70 years of experience,” said Usazraa, a 20-year-old student at the National University of Mongolia who said she would give it her vote. “The Revolutionary Party was sleeping, but the creation of democratic forces influenced them. Now they have no other way but to change.”

Fumiyo Holley, a free-lance photojournalist, contributed to this article from Ulan Bator.