Friday Night Resolutions

By Charlie

[I wrote this on the weekend of January 13-14, right after the dual collapse of the Mongolian government and our old blog host, blogzy.com.]

It snowed on Wednesday night, hours after members of the Mongolian People’s Revolution Party walked out of Parliament. The next day, the big ticker at the Government Weather Office declared a total snowfall of 8 centimeters. The political situation was less certain. Parliament was expected to dissolve immediately, but it did not.

Thursday was a day of protests and uncertainty. It all unfolded against the beauty of this winter’s first real snowfall. As the MPs debated inside Government House, demonstrators who oppose the former communist MPRP gathered outside and tried to storm the building. The police kept them back. The protestors burned the MPRP leader in effigy before storming party headquarters.

As Thursday wore on, the 8 centimeters of snow that fell on Ulaanbaatar’s central Sukhbaatar Square was trampled into an icy slick. Protestors, police and ordinary citizens shuffled across the Square, almost skating along. Many of them slipped and fell.

24 hours after the MPRP walked away from the government, there was no resolution. Parliament had not dissolved. But out on Sukhbaatar Square, the real work began. Long after the protestors and MPs had gone home, a battalion of city workers brought their brooms and shovels to clear the snow. Teams of five or six workers divided up across the vast Square, shoveling snow into large piles that were then heaved by hand into a fleet of waiting Russian dump trucks. They worked under fluorescent flood lights. It was frigidly cold.

Friday was a lot like Thursday. The debates continued inside Parliament. Mongolians paused by television sets to watch the recriminations live on State Television. A smaller protest in support of the MPRP appeared in Sukhbaatar Square while the shoveling and sweeping continued.

Then, on Friday evening, it was finished. The Parliament voted to dissolve just as the last load of snow was carted off the Square. The workers and the MPs went home, though one group must have felt a greater sense of accomplishment.

Mongolia is now without a working legislative body. The former Prime Minister, a Democrat, called the situation “dangerous.” But for most Mongolians, it is business as usual. Nobody is burning tires in the street or shooting guns into the air. Even the increased police presence around the Parliament has returned to its usual state.

And Sukhbaatar Square is the largest expanse of land in the entire region that is not covered with snow. Despite the failings of government, the city workers of Ulaanbaatar succeeded in their own demonstration of defiance against the Mongolian winter.