 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you may be. Welcome to our webinar co-hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia and the International Institute for Democracy and Electro-Assistance or International Idea. At this webinar we'll be discussing international ideas, global state of democracy report and the experience of elections in Mongolia during COVID-19. My name is Adi Aman and I will be your moderator today. We have been joined by our distinguished speakers, whom I will introduce a bit later. But we also joined by His Excellency Mr. Ach Bayer, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then Mr. Jena Bazar, the Ambassador of Mongolia to Sweden and His Excellency Dr. Kevin Casas Zamora, Secretary General of International Idea. Please note that this event is recorded and that the recording will be posted on International Ideas social media pages. I will run through the agenda for you first. We will start with an opening address by His Excellency Mr. Ach Bayer followed by the presentations of our three speakers, Ms. Lena Rikila-Tamang, Regional Director of Asia and the Pacific for International Idea, His Excellency Mr. Sokbater Damdin, Member of the State Great Hurao of Mongolia and former Foreign Minister, Mr. Gava Ochir, Member and Secretary of the General Elections Committee of Mongolia. After the presentations, I will be leading a discussion with one or two follow-up questions to each speaker and then I will open the floor to the attendees for posing their questions. Please use the Q&A function to pose your questions and I will be reading out the questions to the respective speakers accordingly. If you would like to ask your question in Mongolia, Ms. Unursatsek at the GEC will be translating it for us so please go ahead and ask your questions in Mongolia as well. We're actually supposed to start with the opening address by His Excellency Mr. Ach Bayer, State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia. Thank you, Anand. Secretary General Kasas Samara, Honorable Member of Parliament, Mr. Di Sokbater, Chairman Dilgir Narang, Distinguished Participants and Ladies and Gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure to extend to you all a very warm welcome. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to International Idea for co-organizing this webinar. It's an an opportunity time to convene virtually this important webinar. Last month, the members of the International Idea celebrated the 25th anniversary of the idea, International Idea. Taking this opportunity, I would like to extend my sincere congratulations on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of International Idea. Democratic principles have been central elements of Mongolia's foreign policy and international cooperation since our democratic transition. Mongolia is building its track record at home and abroad for its work to strengthen democratic institutions and processes. In 2003, Mongolia hosted the fifth International Conference of New and Restored Democracies. In 2005, Mongolia set up an institutionalized millenium-delocated coal mine on democratic governance and human rights. We held the presidency of community of democracies from 2011 through 2013, organizing the Ministry of Conference at which the member states adopted Lombarder Declaration. In 2012, the UN General Assembly at Mongolia's initiative unanimously adapted the resolution on education for democracy. The fifth annual Freedom Online Conference was held in Lombarder under the chairmanship of Mongolia in May 2015. Building the capacity of institutions and citizens to improve democracy, sharing our specific democracy experiences and promoting education on democratic violence are the common threats that run through our approach to democracy cooperation. International Idea has been a valuable partner for Mongolia. Mongolia joined the International Idea in 2011 and shared the Council of Member States in 2016. With the assistance of International Idea, Mongolia will continue to support the countries in our region by sharing our democracy experiences and promoting education on democratic values. We are fully support the organization's approach to defend the values and future of democracy. We are stronger when we come closer together to meet the current challenges and democracy. It is gratifying to note that the agenda of today's webinar covers wide range of very interesting items relating to the key findings from International Idea's Global State of Democracy 2019 report. The State of Democracy in Mongolia and the experience of managing a general election in Mongolia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The International Idea's Global State of Democracy report, which has the indices of democratic performance for 163 countries, is a crucial tool for analysts, scholars, journalists and civil society activists to assess the quality of the democracy. It is also very important for policymakers, government officials and institutions to focus and adjust their further activities and strategies. Although Mongolia was badly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the country has made good efforts toward consolidating its democracy in the year of 2020. Mongolia amended its constitution for the second time since its ratification in 1992. These amendments entered into force in May 2020. We strongly believe that the amendments, which have been discussed since 2010 and passed on to three parliament will strengthen our parliamentary democracy and governance. Mongolia held its parliamentary elections last June. The elections were unique for the significant participation of new political parties and independent candidates. The elections took place in an extraordinary circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These unique circumstances certainly affected the elections. I'm glad that we are going to discuss this topic today. With these remarks, I look forward to successful webinars and I'm confident that we will have rich discussions. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, your excellency, for your opening address. Let me introduce the first speaker, Ms. Dena Rikla Taman. She will be speaking about the key findings of International Ideas Global State of Democracy Report 2019 with a focus on Asia and the Pacific. Before joining IDIA, Ms. Taman was former Secretary General of Finland's advisory board for relations with developing countries at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She's a member and former chair of the Network Institute for Global Democracy and IGD. While there, she coordinated projects promoting North-South Dialogues on Democracy and Globalization and was involved in the work social forum process. She is also a former board member of Asia Europe Foundation or ASI. She holds a master's of political science degree from University of Tampere and the University of Udo. Lena, the screen is yours. Thank you, Adi. State secretary, honorable member of parliament, secretary of the Mongolian election commission, ambassador, secretary general, all distinguished participants in Mongolia and from around the world. What I will do is to present you with the findings from International Ideas Global State of Democracy Report on Asia and the Pacific and zooming in on Mongolia. I will share my screen. So I will be discussing how the democracy was doing in the region pre-pandemic and what is the situation now, recognizing that pandemic is not yet over and many of its social democratic implications are yet to reveal themselves. Given the time limitation, I will provide you just a few highlights and teasers which will hopefully entice you to investigate the reports more carefully. Only yesterday, Idea published a report taking stock of global democratic trends before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, to which I will also refer to in the second part of the presentation. The purpose of this slide is really to demonstrate what are we measuring when we measure democracy. In our framework, we have five core attributes of democracy, which are the last large circles that you see and which Idea believes are key elements of democracy. We have representative government, fundamental rights, checks on government, impartial administration and participatory engagement. And the statistical data is generated relate to these attributes. Our indices cover 158 countries across the world since 1975. As we want to take a longer perspective in order to track and recognize trends over time. Stiders, there is the obvious difficulty of saying anything all-encompassing about the region as diverse as Asia and the Pacific, the most populous region in the world, including old and established democracies, third wave democracies, new and emerging ones and persistent pockets of hybridity and authoritarian regimes, including some of the richest and the poorest countries of the world. Hence, it's quite difficult to draw general conclusions that would be valid for the entire region. However, the GSOD indices will provide you with individual country profiles as well as data in reference to subregions as seen in this slide. So moving on to some picture findings. On what it comes to democratization, yesterday was not better in Asia and the Pacific. Asia and the Pacific is more democratic now than it has ever been. Over the last 44 years, the number of democracies have doubled and there has been a reduction of non-democracies. And this expansion has been driven by democratic transitions, recent examples including Myanmar and Malaysia from the last four years. And most of these transitions, while eventually an often elite negotiated, were driven and pushed from below rather than being a result of full collapses of the previous regimes. And that may be one of the reasons why regions' democracies are proven rather resilient, but also vulnerable to what can be called a sort of loud executive action. And not so good news is that the region still has a number of authoritarian regimes, half of the Asian, half of the countries in Asia do not currently have democratically elected governments and 40% of Asian countries have never experienced democracy in their history. And another negative finding is that hybridity, hybrid regimes referring to countries that go through the motions of elections, which however cannot be said to be fair or competitive. The hybridity has not been a stepping stone to more sustained democracy that has become rather long-lasting. Democracy comes in many forms and shapes in the region. Majority of the region's democracies are mid-range democracies, meaning doing relatively well with some weaknesses. High-performing democracies include Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan. Weak democracies, 13% remain a worry. And another big worry currently is the rapid democratic declines in a couple of large mid-range democracies in the region. And I'll come back to that in a minute. I will not dwell on these attributes for long. Simply to say, these are showing us a couple of things. How differently, number one, how differently subregions are doing on various aspects of democracy from largely authoritarian Central Asia to democratic Oceania. And secondly, democratic aspects with the most improvements over time relate to direct democracy, basic welfare, local democracy, clean elections and civil society participation. I think it's notable that the region has made significant advances on electoral processes and institutions and East Asia in particular on fundamental rights. Leased advances have taken place with checks on government and in partial administration, including absence of corruption, which continues to undermine achievements in other aspects of democracy. But problems remain and are intensified over the last five years. More than half of Asian democracies suffer some degree of democratic erosion, meaning gradual decline. And already pre-pandemic, a number of countries were experiencing deepening autocratization and democratic backsliding. So, source of concern is that two important democracies of the region, India and the Philippines, have with declines over the last five to nine years to extend that we call democratic backsliding. And this has continued during the pandemic. It's also to be noted that also democracies such as Australia, Japan and New Zealand had suffered some erosion, as have Indonesia, Mongolia and Timor-Leste. And these erosions are linked to weakening checks and balances restrictions on civil liberties. So, let us turn to Mongolia, which is a mid-range performing democracy since 1992. It belongs to world's top 25% on number of attributes and world's bottom in none. I think it's however important to note that between 2009 and 2019, there is a decline even if ever so slight in all attributes and the impartial administration, which is with the sub-attribute on absence of corruption, is close to red. The only low score at the moment relates to direct democracy that is not applied in Mongolia. Let us take a look at the specific impact of COVID-19 in the region on democracy and human rights in reference to ideas global COVID-19 monitoring tool also accessible from our website. As is well known, the COVID-19 pandemic initially broke out in Asia and the Pacific region in late 2019 with the first case in Wuhan, China reported in December 2019 and the first death subsequently in January 2020. And very soon after countries started to introduce restricting measures and many of the Asian countries were among the first ones. So this is the kind of global picture telling us that more than half of the countries covered by the idea tool had implemented measures to curb COVID-19 that are concerned from democracy and human rights perspective. It is to be said that all countries in the world have imposed some kind of restrictions on basic freedoms and democratic rights during the COVID-19 pandemic and obvious reasons. However, in 38% they were of temporary nature and imposed in the context of constitutionally defined state of democracy. Whereas measures in 62% of the countries are considered transgression of democratic standards because they were either disproportionate, illegal, indefinite or unnecessary in relation to health threat. And this is how Asia and the Pacific looks like. As you can see, the number of countries with concerning developments is slightly higher than the global average, which was 62%. And these are the countries with most concerns, which confirms the hypothesis that the countries were ailing before the pandemic would continue to do so. The authoritarian regimes would be tightening their grip and the weak democracies being at risk. But also that many of the medium and mid-range and high-performing democracies can draw from their strengths. And if not coming out, not unscratched, are able to sustain democracy and human rights and take care of the public health at the same time. In many ways, the pandemic has been an x-ray of our societies revealing sometimes perhaps latent strengths and weaknesses of our political systems. And in terms of the impact of the pandemic, one obvious casualty has been the elections. Asia, however, offers several examples of elections carried out safely and with integrity during the pandemic. As of mid-September 2020, contrary to global trend, more than half of Poles in Asia-Pacific has taken place, big notable exception of Hong Kong elections was which were postponed for a year. Region is also backing the trend of lower-world turnouts. Instead, many elections have seen similar or even higher turnouts, including the Korean elections in April. And I understand also the Mongolian elections in June, while admitting that this has not been the case everywhere. Some of the concerning developments relate to personal integrity and security. We have seen military as law enforcers, also in democracies, such as in the Philippines and in Sri Lanka, and the excessive police force in enforcing lockdowns or countering the protests. There also have been some worries and concerns regarding the contact tracing apps for political purposes, some examples including in China. Very high percentage of the region's hybrid and authoritarian regimes have curbed freedoms of expression, but also around 50% of the democracies, at least temporarily. These include the measures include freedom of expression in the name of curbing freedom of expression in the name of fighting disinformation or even limitations on access to scientific COVID-19 information and data. Media integrity has been one of the hardest hit by restrictions in region's democracies. And these measures and actions have ranged from harassment of journalists, restrictions on access to information and shutdown of new sites to criminalisations and arrests. Just a very quick look on Mongolia. Mongolia's reaction to the pandemic, as was mentioned by the State Secretary, was among the fastest in the world. By the end of January, Mongolia closed its borders with China and closed all schools. And held elections in June with several protective measures in place and I'm sure we will soon hear more about those from the Mongolian Election Commission itself. However, there are three aspects to watch for from a democracy and human rights perspective. Media integrity, civil liberties and social rights and equality. Globally speaking, the list of and in the region, the list of concerns obviously would be much longer, including gender equality, treatment of minorities and vulnerable groups and so on. And however, despite the challenges that pandemic has posed for democracy, it has also opened up some opportunities and spurred some positive developments, which are important to highlight as well. I don't have a slide about that, but those include electoral resilience. The fact that political parties have been adapting to the new situation. Parliaments have been adapting. I understand Mongolia was one of the early innovators on how to keep the parliament open. The role of local government and federal arrangements have proven critical and also momentum for revitalizing civil society in many parts of Asia and the Pacific. So hopefully through the discussion, we can talk about some reasons or for optimism, but what gives us all hope and how are we best able to use this crisis for opportunities as well. So here are the links to some of our resources existing and upcoming in where we discuss these challenges, but also the opportunities more in detail. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you very much, Lena, for the insightful presentation on International Ideas, Global State of Democracy report. And I think we should go to the next presentation by his excellency, Mr. Sokbetter Damdin, who is currently a member of the State Great Hural of Mongolia, which is the Parliament of Mongolia. Mr. Sokbetter started his career as a diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and from 2002 to 2008, he was Foreign Policy Advisor to President Bhagavandi and President Ekbeyer of Mongolia. He then became State Secretary of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia, and in 2012 was appointed as Minister for Environment and Tourism of Mongolia. He was also Secretary of the Mongolian People's Party. He then moved to the private sector as CEO of Zillian LLC and also Advisor of Justice Consulting. In 2004, he joined the cabinet again as Minister for Construction at 2014, I mean Minister for Construction and Urban Development of Mongolia. And he then became Member of Parliament from 2016 till today. In 2017, in October, he was appointed as Minister for Foreign Affairs until June 2020. Mr. Sokbetter will be presenting on the State of Democracy and Constitutional Amendment process of Mongolia. Thank you. Can you hear me? I have muted my microphone. Very good. Well, I will not be making a presentation, but I would rather be talking about the State of Democracy here in Mongolia and the process of the amendments to the Constitution that we had a year ago. One of the most important things about our previous Constitution was that basically our first Constitution that moved Mongolia to a constitutional democracy was passed in 1924. And after that, there were some amendments and in 1990, when democratic changes were democratic changes took place in Mongolia, understanding what the system changed, then we adopted our new Constitution in 1992. Now, this 1992 Constitution did its job, really, for making sure that Mongolia is smoothly transited and changed into a safe environment. The primary of the Constitution to bring in democratic system and naturalize it in the Mongolian environment worked. Now, in order to say whether it worked or not, what are the criteria? Why? We can say that it worked and it did its job. The thing is this, Mongolia is an Oriental society. If you look into civilizationally, looking to the statehood and state or structure of Mongolia, it was always Oriental state autocratic system that was governing the country. And when we brought in this democratic system in an Oriental society, the common concepts and understanding was that basically Western liberalism and parliamentary democracy, especially, was very hard to find its roots in an Oriental society which does not have democratic past and civilizational and cultural precepts and preconditions for development. Mongolia really proved, on the contrary, that in Oriental societies that democracy can also work as long as there is political will and as long as there is wide public support. Now, another very important thing why we believe and I believe that democracy worked and in the Constitution worked is this. Back in 1990, when we started the transition from socialist economy to open market economy and democratic system, the economy basically collapsed because it was completely sustained and supported by comic-con countries and most importantly by the Soviet Union. And when the budget support was withdrawn from the economy of Mongolia, it really started drying out. One of the worst consequences of this sudden change was that we lost our markets. And in addition to that, because of the nuclearization, the uranium market changed. There was sufficient uranium available in the world market and therefore, for example, one of the commodities that Mongolia could deliver, the price for uranium fell. The price for copper fell at that time because in the 90s, because of this sudden change globally when the eastern block started changing, most of these countries went into prices, which means the global demand for commodities also started dropping and this dragged down copper prices. So the most important Mongolian exports were under stress and we basically did not have the usual income that we used to have. In addition to that, meat market in Russia was not available for us anymore. And because we privatized our animal, our veterinary services, which were socialist, centrally planned economy structure, when we lost the animal, this government socialist structure collapsed. So veterinary services could not provide adequate services to our cattle sector, which means our products market value-wise globally started dropping as well. And we lost our market to Latin America in Russia. So again, another item of our exports dropped. This really drastically led to the economic crisis and in the middle of the 1990s, we had the inflation of 300%. Now you can imagine the government officer would have a salary of around $30 and when he left his office to pick up his monthly pay, by the time he reached the office of payment and got the money, the value of that salary was already down compared to the moment that he left his office. Really, I mean, this was how serious the situation was. And at that time, I remember World Bank experts headed by Jeffrey Sachs came to Mongolia, our team, and they did assessment on Mongolia. And their conclusion was that this economy has a very great future. And at best, it will be growing. The GDP will be growing 4%. And it will be ranging between one to 4%. That was the projection for Mongolia done by such an expert as Jeffrey Sachs. And at that time of his analysis, he was not right. He was not wrong because that was the situation. So, at the turn of the century, what happened was that this long, very committed transition to the market economy and democracy, this new system, started working in synergy. A decade for the economy and the political system to work in synergy. And then it started to work in synergy. And even before mining boom, now many people say that Mongolian growth is due to mining boom. No, in 2004, before mining boom started, Mongolian GDP grew at the rate of 10.4%. On its own internal strength, on its own internal reserves. So what it had shown was that the system started working. Now, and this new constitution, really with this major orientation and legal basis for democratic liberal system, where free entrepreneurship for 3 million Mongolians to survive, was encoded into the brain of Mongolians. When there was, you know, that you have, government will not be there to help you. And it your life, your destiny is up to you. And when 3 million people started this free entrepreneurship, within 10 years, this economy from a very risky fragile state, started getting into the stage of growth. And very important turning point in our growth in a pattern was in 2003. In 2003 only Mongolian GDP passed the level of $1 billion. Up until then our GDP per capita was less than $400. Our GDP in general was less than $1 billion. And at that time, some of Mongolian top leaders and some of the experts were making Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make a research on how to qualify as a least developed country. At that time, I was Deputy Director of Multilateral Cooperation Department for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And I was one of those who was supposed to do that research. And I refuse that we never did it. Because I said, no, this country is not a least developed country. And if we ourselves qualify into that classification, because as you know, least developed country has a classification, developing country classification is not there. It's a self-chosen category. List developed is like, there are special criterion categories for that. And we could qualify for them. But the reason why I resisted then was that if we qualify ourselves as a least developed country, then we will not be enjoying this foreign direct investment. It will be coming into Mongolian far lesser rate. And really, after that two, three years after that attempt to make Mongolia least developed country, we started enjoying foreign investment. Because economy started growing. What is the biggest promoting factor for attracting foreign investment? It's not that we're democratic. We're nice guys. No, it's performing economy. It's statistics. It's figure. It's money. Money draws money. Money draws attention of investors. And starting from 2004 when the economy started growing, where the statistical data started showing stable growth, that's when investors started looking into Mongolia. And in addition to that, of course, mining boom started. Starting from around 2005, we really started having a big push from the mining investors that also stirred in its turn, resource nationalism. That's one of the risks and challenges of democratic system. Because if you respect pluralism of ideas, resource nationalism is one of the ideas that any nation has. And therefore, we really had these challenges. And my previous speaker was really talking about this resilience of democracy. Now in 2019, it started growing pretty fast. So economic difficulties changed into resource nationalism, into the problems that democracy itself had in itself. And we did not anticipate, we did not know these sort of radical views could be coming out of democracy. But it was there and it came out. And it was another challenge of the next decade. And the interesting thing about the constitution of 1992 was that in these times, there was not clear delimitation and division between the structures of power, the branches of power. It was, in reality, we were calling ourselves parliamentary democracy. And it is the intent of original, you know, drafters of constitution. But through functioning, it was semi parliamentary democracy with very strong elements of presidency. And when there was this unclear division between the branches of power, and when we started having this resource nationalism challenge, it really became a much bigger challenge that we have anticipated. The biggest problem for us in starting from 2005 was our own success. Mongolian economy started growing very fast. Within 10 years, it grew 10 times. Now, you were comparing the performance of economies in our region. If you see which economy grew 10 times within a decade, you won't find such an economy. China has been growing very fast. But Mongolian economy from $1 billion in 2003, it reached $11 billion in 2012. That's within 9 years, 10 times. And when this wealth started accumulating, there was a very strong sense of unfairness that started accumulating in the psyche of the voters. And that was the feeding, you know, source for resource nationalism. And when we wanted to meet these challenges, this unclearity between power structures was impending the process. Therefore, already when we started going through these very tough challenges, what we saw was that we had resilience. The constitution with its own deficiencies and problems yet was providing resilience of the system. But as these challenges started going and it was impeding the growth that could have been much faster, then politicians and the public started realizing that we have to do something with the constitution. So from our own challenges against our growth opportunities, we started through pain, error, started realizing the problems and flaws in our constitution. So for a decade, and very good thing about our constitutional system and parliamentary system was there, even though we were understanding this, changing constitution was a deadly difficult thing. And last year we lived through it. The thresholds of change are so high that when we had absolute majority in the parliament, still it was not guaranteed that we could accomplish the amendments of the constitution that we have accomplished. That's how difficult change of constitution turned out to be. And that was the encoded resilience that was within the constitutionals. Now, as a result of these challenges, we introduced these changes into the constitution and I'll go through them very fast. First of all, because the original intent of the country was to build classical Westminster parliamentary system, then we wanted to strengthen the parliament and the cabinet, the government. At the same time, we wanted to balance down the powers of the presidential office. That was a clear intent. And both presidential office, parliament and cabinet worked in a great synergy to change and to bring about these changes. There was a broader consensus in the society, thanks to which we could change the constitution, although it was very pink. So now only the powers that are specifically stated in the constitution will be the powers of the president. Under 1992 constitution, although these powers were outlined in the constitution, but through branch laws or organic laws, what we did was that we increased technically the powers of the president. And many of the lawyers at legal community were saying that this was ultra virus, you know, a change of the state of affairs that were embedded in the constitution. And therefore we wanted to limit it and really put it just within the tenets of the constitution. And as a result of this, now many of the laws are being changed exactly to fit it into the tenets of the current constitution, which means we will be changing those organic laws that were giving unintended powers to the president and limiting it to the constitutional limits only. Now, besides that, again, since we were talking about this growing sense of unfairness and unfair and unequitable distribution of wealth due to this very fast growth boosted by the mining industry sector, we included into our constitution this provision of equitable approach when it comes to natural resources. And I think it's also a very important, you know, point that we put in there. Because indeed, when people do not have this sense of fairness, there is no consensus in the society. And we need this consensus to a great extent. And therefore, this provision we included in there in accordance with that, the mining license, mining tenements allocation processes will have to be adjusted according to this provision. Also, in the constitution, in these equitable opportunities for natural resources for Mongolian people, you know, provision, we also included their environmental dimension so that when we develop our mining, we develop it in such a manner that we will keep the environment the way we received from our previous generation, at least. So in other words, now this environmental dimension is constitutional already. Another thing. Excuse me, could you please wrap up because your time is up. Cool. Yeah, I'll be now wrapping up. Another important thing that we included into the constitution was that members of parliament could be recalled. And this was not allowed before. Of course, the threshold is very high. It's not easy to you know, recall the members of parliament. But that possibility constitutionally is there, especially if the member of parliament is found to have committed constitutional violation, then that's the legal ground to recall the member of parliament. Now, our judiciary system is undergoing various various challenges. And therefore, in under the new constitution, we have adjusted our law on courts as to giving, opening up the window to change justices and judges that we change it. And that was constitutionally changed. Therefore, now we will be introducing laws that will be securing the independence of the judiciary, which is a very important system. And we increase the powers of the prime minister. Now, only four members of the parliament can become members of the cabinet. But the choice of the cabinet members is by the prime minister. Also, by increasing the powers of the prime minister, because prime minister was too dependent on the parliament, we also try to introduce this check and balance system between parliament and the prime minister. So if the prime minister after elections is not, for example, appointed within 45 days, I guess, then the parliament will be disbanded. In other words, the parliament cannot play around with this game, they better be, you know, appointed prime minister as soon as possible. So these sort of very important crucial check and balances between the branches of the, you know, government system were introduced. And I think that will be strengthening our state of democracy. Thank you. So that's basically, you know, the changes, I mean, the fundamental changes in terms of balancing out the powers between government branches. Thank you. Thank you. Your excellency, Mr. Sokbetter. I see that Mr. Chairman Belgrinaran has arrived. He was earlier at a meeting in parliament discussing the amendments to the presidential election law, I believe. So let me introduce Mr. Belgrinaran. He was in the early 90s, elected president, chairman and president of the Youth League, Youth Association of Mongolia. And then he joined the prognosis center where he served as a researcher where he devoted his time to conduct research works on election systems and its related areas of democratic elections that offered ideas to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government authorities. He has extensive background working in both public and private sectors. Primarily, I see at the road transport center of Mongolia, which then into National Road Transport Center, a state-owned enterprise. And since 28th August 2020, Mr. Belgrinaran was appointed chairperson of the General Election Commission of Mongolia. So Mr. Belgrinaran will be speaking to us about the challenges and lessons from Mongolian elections held during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please, Mr. Belgrinaran, the screen is yours. And good afternoon, good morning, good evening for everyone. I'm delighted to participate in today's online webinar and I would like to give a brief overview of how Mongolia organized parliamentary and local elections during the pandemic. Just some technical issue and this is our PowerPoint presentation. During the COVID-19, Mongolia have organized two elections, Mongolian parliamentary election and the local election. In the connection with the global situation of COVID-19 on April 29, 2020, the parliament of Mongolia have passed the law on prevention of coronavirus infection. According to this law, General Election Commission in the collaboration of the other professional organizations has developed a procedure for preventing spread and spreading of the coronavirus epidemic during the parliamentary election, which is approved by the government of Mongolia. We have closely cooperated with the organizations which is part of the situation. As of the regulation, you can see in the picture during the election, as of the regulation election related activities were conducted under the strict disinfection and protection rules and allowed, avoided crowd of the people in any way during the election period. During the election campaign, the political parties and their staff kept these rules and pre-election rallies were held in the absence of gathering of people and using disinfection and protection measures. The campaign materials which should be distributed to the homes, it was put on the door and without any contacts with the members of these families. During the registration of the political parties, we had some opportunity because Mongolia have a few number of population and we have very big territory and that's why crowd was not so intensive and we have used all the strict regulation during the registration of political parties. You can see from our PowerPoint presentation pictures. During the election rally, the people with the disability, they had an opportunity to participate in all kind of events you can see from the picture and they were active in the election. Our government have adapted additional budget for the election because it was during the special situation COVID and we are very grateful for this. We have learned from the experiences of countries that held elections during the pandemic including South Korea which successfully held parliamentary elections on April 15th just before our election. Also, we would like to thank ABAP and the Idea International for sharing with the news and the information on the experience of holding elections and the experience of other countries was very useful for us. These two elections have been held in Mongolia when we didn't have an infection in inside the country and we are very soon will have a presidential election in June 2021. Today we have discussed draft of the presidential election law on the parliamentary session. We hope that the situation of providing election during the presidential election will be maybe a little bit different because during previous two elections we didn't have infections inside the country but now we have already spread infection in country. That's why we need to more work on the organization of the election. Thank you very much. In the first place, we have two different people. First, they are all from the same family, and I don't know if I remember the names, but I remember the names of all the people. When I was born, I had a father, and I had a mother, and I remember. If I remember correctly, I remember the names of the people And also, I would like to add some points. This is during the parliament election where we had to register votes of about 2 million 3,000 people and out of them 1,400 and 400 4,600 700 people participated, which is turned out of 73 and 6% for the parliamentary election, which is very high since 2000. And some international organizations and NGOs have taken interesting activities on the education of water education and the turnout was quite high because of these efforts. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr Chairman, for that presentation. It's quite remarkable how Mongolia conducted your elections successfully during the pandemic. So we have about 10 to 15 minutes for discussion. So please pose your questions through the Q&A panel usually on the right hand side of your screens. And make sure that it's directed to the panelists. While we wait, I would like to ask a question to Ms. Tamang. You mentioned about civil society in your presentation. Can you elaborate more about civil society's role and participation in the region? Yeah, thanks, Eddie. Yeah, I wish I had had more time to talk about the state of civil society, which is obviously as diverse as is the region. But I think without hesitation, on the basis of the TSOD findings, we can say that state that emergence of a strong civil society in the region has been defining feature of the democratic era. I can't remember now the figures exactly, but I think it was that the civil society participation has increased around 50% since 1975. Of course, emerged in the form of resistance against the authoritarian regimes in the region and also then developed to a key player in service delivery, advocacy, democracy and human rights promotion and so on. However, in the recent years, and as has been the case in so many other parts of the world, there has been attempts to undermine civic space and freedom of speech and the media throughout the Asia and the Pacific region. And in the sort of a finding level, we could say that civil society has expanded while the civic space has contracted in the region over the last few years. And the pandemic has been interesting as it has. On the other hand, we have seen the intensifying of the shrinking civic space in many parts of the region and in many parts of the situation for the civil society can be quite difficult at the moment. On the other hand, the pandemic seemed to have triggered some simmering discontent in some parts of the region. We have seen the mass protests in Thailand that were met with quite heavy hand. There have also been examples where the government has basically obligated its responsibilities or have been slow or inefficient in its response and it's been the civil society actors who have taken on and the networks have taken on providing basic food supplies, even medical and even financial relief to vulnerable sections of the population. So the picture is quite mixed, but certainly we've seen this expansion of civil society. That's the story of Asia over the last 44 years, while at the same time, at the moment, there are these warring trends of shrinking space for actors to operate. Thank you, Elena. So Mr. Tsok-Batter, what do you think, how do you see the role of civil society in Mongolia, in Mongolian democracy? I think the role of civil society is one of the most crucial elements of democracy. So the way I see what democracy is, what sort of government structure it is, is this. The whole notion of statehood, regulations, norms are departing from a human being and it's ending in human being. In other words, human being is the central asset and capital that has to be protected. And the only reason why government is there is to protect that human being. Now, when we're talking about the protection by the government is a risky notion as well because governments have power in itself, political will, interest. And therefore, what can check and balance the government in terms of securing the rights and liberties of a human being? That's NGOs, non-governmental organizations. And therefore, the role from this fundamental approach is very crucial because we cannot lead to the government, the sole role of securing my liberties and freedoms. I have to protect it myself. Individually, it will be difficult. Then, what comes next? The organized form of individuals in a non-governmental form. And from that perspective, these non-governmental organizations are very important. Also, now, it's from human rights dimension, from existential dimension, from another dimension in terms of correcting government policies, providing these pluralistic ideas in terms of developing this precision-based decision-making policies. Again, non-governmental organizations are very crucial. And of course, I was part of the government myself, and I know government organizations can be pain in the back, but this is the pain in the back that we need for the good of the society. That if you're a politician, you have to learn to live with that. They're not there to praise you. They're there to criticize you, to tell you what's working, what's not working. And because they lack fundamentally this government power, what happens is that naturally, in order to be heard, they usually cry very loud. That makes a lot of discomfort for politicians, but that's how they are heard. Therefore, at times, there are exaggerations, but it's not because of exaggerations. It is not the reason to eliminate or think that NGOs are not needed. No, they are needed. Thank you. And from this perspective, it's very important, crucial point of democracy. Yeah, thank you. I'm intrigued by what you said that it's a good pain to have, because I would like to turn to Mr. Del Guernara now. And Heidakvar of Open Society Forum wrote that civil society is fighting to have access to voter rolls as we deliberate on the presidential election law. The GEC is very dubious about civil society's role in ensuring integrity of elections. So this is what Mr. Sotbater was talking about, that civil society is fighting for upholding of rights, and now they are demanding the right to have access to voter rolls. What do you say about that? Thank you. We are very much relying on the election and water education and other activities from civil society and international organizations, especially for vulnerable groups or special groups of their populations. As an example, Waters stated that they are very much like this campaign, which is named Mongolian traditional costume and people really liked that and who came to the station in the Mongolian traditional costume. You can see the picture and it was very much encouraged and especially young generation liked this event or this campaign and maybe the turnout was high because of this successful campaign. We are very much relying on the election and water education and other activities from the civil society. What education is mostly organized within the budget which is allocated to the General Election Commission and we are cooperating with civil society organizations but it will be much better if civil society organized all these things are not according to the money allocated or organized by General Election Commission. Thank you Mr Chairman. We are pressed for time but I do want to allow one more question. This is from Geser Ganbatter and the question is for Mr Sokbatter. Mongolia is based on the Westminster model where the model encourages a two-party system since the first democratic elections the effective number of parliamentary parties are somewhat around 1.8 compared to other democratic countries it is significantly low. Is it a worrisome problem? Very interesting mathematics. So Mr Ganbatter your math must be somewhat unique math that I'm not aware of. We have two major parties of course but now in the parliament we have actually three parties or even four parties MPRP MPP Democratic Party and Labor Party. Of course the two minor parties have each single member but still they're there and within the 30 years of democratic elections in the parliament we had independents we had representatives of other parties as well like civil will party was there also for some time etc. So yes we have two major parties and I understand what is meant by 1.8 which means is there is internally within the democratic party a very strong criticism as to the opposition capacity of the democratic party because organizationally it has eroded and it has become pretty weak but that's general view but in reality I disagree with it. It's a democracy it's based on popularity you cannot engineer it there will be times we will lose when we will lose internal party strife will be there once internal party strife and struggle starts the party becomes weak so for the next election that comes after that defeat we may lose even more seats nobody guarantees it the final say is with the people but if you keep performing you can get votes that was in the 2020 elections so in other words yeah in the views of many people the current democratic party may be looking not quite as one party but 0.8 of a party but this is not the case it's a natural democratic process through which the system gets stronger the democratic party is getting also trying to regain its internal strength for example after these elections they changed their leadership that's a healthy process they're reacting to the loss they're trying to change their image they're trying to increase their competitiveness through internal strength these are right responses and if we start trying to engineer it this is not going to work most important thing from our party is to respect our opponents not to play on their you know when they're weak to play to the extent that to demolish them no we need them when they're there we are stronger if they're not there nothing guarantees the change into authoritarian dictatorial system which Mongolia does not want this country had this bitter experience and knowledge of dictatorship of one person during communism and that historical memory is still there and people have not forgotten it forgotten it therefore you know even we within our party we do not want to be the single party that rules to be a dominant player no many of our members are saying that we need democratic party to be stronger and we wish them well we want them to regain strength to stand up in their on their feet as soon as possible thank you thank you Mr. Stockbatter and thank you very much for all panelists for your contribution and for the participants for your questions as well I know that we are behind schedule but I would like to ask you to to stick around a while a bit longer for the concluding remarks from international idea secretary general and his excellency Dr. Kevin Casas Zamora the excellency whenever you're ready thank you so much Ari and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen your excellencies partners colleagues and friends I am truly delighted to be here today and I would sincerely like to thank the state secretary of foreign affairs Mr. Nyandori Agbayar and the ministry for organizing this webinar together with the with the general election commission the state great rural of Mongolia and our colleagues at international idea our regional director Lina Rikila Tamang and and our senior program manager Ari Aman some some of my colleagues know and and you may not believe this but I have a long-standing fascination with Mongolia when I was a kid in the tropics in Costa Rica I would spend hours reading about Mongolia and the caravans going through the Gobi Desert to far away destinations along the Silk Road and and just generally about the the truly remarkable history of the place so I spent the small part of my childhood wanting to visit and wanting to engage more with your country I must also say that I I deeply admire what Mongolia has been able to do from from a democracy point of view over the past three decades in the most difficult neighborhood and we're very proud to have you as one of our member states and we're grateful for the for the active role that you've played within international idea but also for the importance that you've given to democratic reforms in your country as well as in the region your efforts to enhance citizen participation and conduct political finance reforms as well as your knowledge sharing throughout Asia-Pacific are really a powerful testimony of your commitment to advancing a democracy most of all Mongolia gives me hope it is one of the few beacons of democracy in the region mainly known for authoritarian regime the consolidation of your democracy in very difficult conditions is an inspiring example for others to follow at a time when authoritarian temptations are running high and I truly hope that Mongolia will continue on this on this path it to further strengthen its democratic processes and institutions fight political corruption enhance the transparency of money in politics and preserve healthy political competition and and here I would like to say I've heard many interesting things in the course of this conversation but but two of them stand out I mean two two of the remarks made by Mr. Dandin it strike me as truly truly important it first of all it this notion which I share deeply that it is simply false that the values of democracy are inimical to Asian culture a that's I've never bought into that argument a partly because it is for the most part a self-serving argument I mean those that make that argument are usually authoritarian regimes so there's a reason why they're making that argument and there are enough examples by now of Asian peoples rising up to demand democracy and rising up to the challenges of building democratic systems a to be enough of a refutation of that argument I mean for I'm going to be very blunt here I mean for every single person that claims that Asian values are inimical to democracy I have an answer for you Hong Kong so I I'm particularly pleased to a to hear you say that because obviously it's a much more powerful argument when made from someone from the region and from someone who comes from from Asian culture and number two I'm also very happy to hear you saying that one of the of the key unwritten rules that allow democracy to flourish is to have respect for your opponent a quite frankly in light of what we're witnessing in the US a that's the only example that you need to see a to understand how damaging it is when you come to see your opponents not as legitimate but as enemies a so I guess those two remarks strike me as as particularly telling in terms of the of the hope that we can have about the about the future path of Mongolian democracy and in all of this you have a friend in international idea we stand ready to support you in every way we can a to make that future path of for Mongolian democracy a success and and we have you have a friend in us to continue to enhance our collaboration and mutual learning and as I said I've learned a lot just by listening to the presentations on the state of democracy in Mongolia and and and also about the challenges and lessons learned from the Mongolian elections during the pandemic and these lessons are crucial because we know that at some point this pandemic will subside a and we also know that this will not be the last major disruption the world will have to face this will keep happening in different shapes and forms next time around we need to be better prepared a by having distilled having t-style the lessons of what worked and what did it and and here please allow me to share just a just a few thoughts a few insights that I've gathered over the past few months a since the pandemic started a first of all I realize that the virus hit those with pre-existing conditions the hardest this is true for individuals as much as it is for countries a this crisis has been unforgiving and exposing pre-existing ills in democracy all over the world leadership deficits social inequalities polarization weak governance a structures under investment in public goods and a very serious erosion in trust in in public institutions secondly I've learned that the quality of democratic governance matters and in a very tangible concrete way it saves lives the pandemic has proved how important the defining elements of a working democracy such as respecting the rule of law engaging in evidence-based decision making seeking consensus with your political opponents protecting the free flow of information and nurturing the open engagement between government and society a how very important those things can be in times of crisis and this is not abstract I mean rather this is something that is borne by the evidence as in other parts of the world we can see that the better performing democracies you know the likes of mongolia Australia New Zealand Taiwan South Korea Japan in general seem to have managed the crisis very well from both the public health and the democracy perspective at the same time the pandemic has revealed or emphasized negative trends in weaker democracies in the region as in the case of Sri Lanka Pakistan or the Philippines so this is even more evident when it comes to elections we have seen many examples of resilient and resourceful election management bodies and and citizens who have adapted to new conditions in in a very short time and we have seen successful cases that show the importance of building consensus political consensus around decisions to carry out the electoral process a we have seen successful efforts to strengthen special voting arrangements we have seen successful cases of efforts to effectively communicate the safety measures adopted we just heard a very clear example here and and how all those things have resulted in high voter turnout and renewed trust in the in the electoral system and here i mean i can only commend the general election commission's ability to hold not one but two covid safe elections this year i mean this is truly a remarkable example to the world i'm convinced that such resilience is a is a spring that is worth projecting and sharing to the neighboring countries in the in the region but we have also seen these are the good cases but we have also seen cases where governments have ignored due process and have attempted to use this pandemic to play fast and lose with electoral rules a to extend their time in office a and those cases inevitably have led to increase political polarization and compromise the electoral processes third i have learned the importance of international cooperation and multilateral responses when faced with disruptions of this scale dealing successfully with global long-term challenges such as recurring pandemic climate change or the simply the technological transformation of our societies will require more collaboration more communication and more commitment from all national governments but also from multilateral organizations like idea and from the global civil society fourth and and and and last and perhaps most importantly i have learned that there's nothing inevitable about the advance and sustainability of democracy that democracy is neither created nor maintained by itself it is something that requires continuous vigilance dedication and support this pandemic is strengthening the already severe headwinds that democracy was facing worldwide if we care as i think we all do about the future of democracy this is the time to build global coalitions to protect it and here i am particularly glad that mongolia has joined the the friends in defense of democracy a coalition initiated by the swedish ministry of foreign affairs there's never been a better time to form a protected network against authoritarian tendencies looming all over the world but we need to go beyond defending democracy we must reinvent democracy and reinvigorate it quite frankly neither democracy nor the world writ large can afford to go back to where we were one year ago we need to expand the frontiers of what's possible so that democracy lifts up to the expectations of citizens and particularly of young people so this is the real task in our hands and one way to do this is by allowing the good examples of democratic governance to be shared widely and travel far the mongolian democracy has a lot to share with the world and also a lot to learn from the world and to make possible that mutual learning is that international idea exists so let me reiterate our commitment to supporting the remarkable story of the political transformation of mongolia against great odds it's a story that will continue to inspire and enlighten all of us that care about the future of democracy and as for me nothing would make me happier and better reconnect me to my childhood that being able to contribute even in a very small way to the long and fascinating history of this unique country please count me in thank you very much thank you very much secretary general for the concluding remarks i think it summed up our discussion very well before before we close i would like to read out clarification from mr gun butter mr so better that the calculations the 1.8 calculation were based on the methodology of laxo and taga pera who are well known political scientists but i personally think that the numbers should be seen with the green of salt so thank you i would like to thank our co-host the ministry of foreign affairs those of its preparations were spearheaded by the embassy of mongolia in stock home headed by the ambassador and also many thanks to miss student set sec set sec for for the preparations for this webinar once again thank you very much for the contribution of the panelists and also the attention and participation of the attendees thank you and see you next time thank you very much to you all uh real pleasure