“It is time to realize representative and direct democracy in Mongolia”

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The Civil Hall at the President hosted last week a discussion themed “Opportunity to simultaneously realize representative and direct democracy in Mongolia”. It was co-organized by the Presidential Office and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). An advisor to the President of Mongolia on civil participation and economic policy L.Dashdorj made the opening remarks at the discussion. A report was delivered by Dr Andreas Auer, a professor of the University of Zurich and founder of the Institute for Democracy Studies (IDS). Mr Dashdorj noted that a model rule was drawn up in 2010 on the civil participation within a policy on supporting the citizens’ participation and on decentralization, and training is being held to introduce this rule. "After being re-elected in 2013, the President of Mongolia Ts.Elbegdorj has been realizing a policy on the smart government. Civil participation is one of the integral parts of the smart government. Our President said it is time to simultaneously implement the representative and direct democracy, so we now must pay to this as a state policy,” Dashdorj said. "Several bills such as on public advertisement and on local polling have been drawn up, and they have been discussed at the Civil Hall in accordance with a direction from the President. Now we are studying experiences of foreign countries and are adjusting them to the Mongolian characteristics,” he said. "Our goal is not only civil participation, but also issues of converting the economic growth into a real development for the country and making it more adequate for families. The main way of achieving a sustainable development is to form a legal environment which allows all individuals to make a joint decision and to co-realize it,” he emphasized. He added that Mongolia is working on creating a legal environment that develops the governance based on democracy and civil participation. Mr Dashdorj also underlined that it has been proven that the representative democracy is not possible to develop without the direct democracy. Mr Andreas Auer explained a possibility of simultaneously developing the representative and direct democracy. “People create their representative democracy by choosing their representatives as state leaders. The election is one of the methods of choosing them. But the voters and elected people do not establish concrete contracts. It means the connection between them is unnatural. "Through the direct democratic system, people can choose their leaders directly. A main feature of the representative democracy is the election, whereas the main element of the direct democracy is the opinion poll. Any matters and problems are tackled by opinion polls all the time. There are many types of opinion polls such as collecting signatures,” Dr Andreas Auer said.