Mongolian Vote OKs Opposition Role in Government : Asia: The change follows nearly 70 years of rigid Communist rule and is seen as a major step for democracy.

Voters in Mongolia on Sunday gave opposition parties a role in government for the first time in nearly seven decades of Communist rule, according to early results released today.

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.

The focus of the balloting was 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.

Opposition candidates won at least 21 Great Hural seats from districts in the capital of Ulan Bator and three seats from provincial districts, according to partial figures released this morning by the three leading opposition parties. Few results were in yet from the countryside. Ballots were being gathered from remote areas by motorcycle and horseback, and no official results were expected until Tuesday.

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.

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 for a Great Hural seat with more than 2,500 votes. Ganbold won a place in Sunday’s runoff by placing second with about 1,300 votes. Ganbold, hoping for an upset, waged a tent-to-tent campaign. But unofficial results released today by National Progress Party leaders showed that he had failed, with Ochirbat receiving 3,525 votes to Ganbold’s 3,278.

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 had 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.

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.