Ex-Communist Wins Mongolian Presidency

A candidate from Mongolia’s former Communist Party won the presidency in an election Sunday that drew nomadic herders on horseback to polling stations across the country’s vast steppe.

The Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, the former Communist party now known as MPRP, was voted out in 1996 but reelected in 2000, and appears to be maintaining its popularity.

Opinion polls before the vote showed its candidate, Nambaryn Enkhbayar, leading three rivals amid nostalgia for the stability of one-party rule and Soviet subsidies that halted in 1990, and his own promises to end chronic poverty.

Enkhbayar received more than 50% of the vote, the minimum required to avoid a runoff, state-run Mongol Radio reported early today. It didn’t give vote totals for Enkhbayar or his three challengers in this sprawling, sparsely populated nation of 2.8 million people.

Mongolia, which is wedged between China and Russia, has a parliamentary system, with a government run by a prime minister. But the presidency has grown in importance as the country has gone through a series of governments over the last decade.

The MPRP’s rivals complain that the party still dominates election bodies that register voters and run polling stations. Foreign observers were visiting polling stations, but there were no immediate reports of misconduct.

Government radio said turnout was more than 70% -- low by Mongolian standards. Turnout was 83% in the last presidential race.

Voters began lining up before polls opened, many dressed in traditional wool robes.

Unlike under communism, “now we can choose,” said Janchiv Tserev, 82, who wore his World War II medals pinned to his dark red tunic. “Before we could vote for only one person. Now there are four candidates.”