Government policies should provide solutions to our problems. They\u00a0reduce uncertainty by building trust among all players.\u00a0 But, in Mongolia’s\u00a0case, policies have been\u00a0fragile, unstable, and unpredictable.\u00a0 Overall, our policies increase uncertainty and build mistrust among ourselves and our partners.<\/p>\n
What do we usually do?\u00a0 Blame each other – politicians, parties, factions, civil society activists, and even foreigners – just in order to escape from the responsibility and raise our own profiles.\u00a0 We don’t ask hard questions – because our blame game usually ends up in conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n
For each major policy issues – we need to ask hard questions and then, we should revoke, revise, or introduce new policies.<\/p>\n
We know these questions, but rarely\u00a0ask them.\u00a0 For a variety of reasons, we, especially our politicians, prefer to blame the people (even if they were part of the policy-making process) and favour a quick temporary fix – within their electoral cycles.\u00a0 Some even don’t recall their own positions at the different stages of policy-making – because they didn’t ask these hard questions and didn’t rack their brains.<\/p>\n
There are many policies in Mongolia – require us asking and answering hard questions.\u00a0 Let’s take a few of them.<\/p>\n
The constitutional revision has been on the table on and off.\u00a0It has very strong, long-term impact on the policymaking process. But, no one really has laid out their reasons in quite convincing ways.\u00a0 When we’re frustrated with the nature of the legislative process (esp. micromanagement of the executive branch, ineffective decision-making), we seek solutions like a bicameral legislature and a strong presidency.<\/p>\n
However, we haven’t\u00a0addressed the pros and cons of our current setting and didn’t ask why our legislature gradually became the weakest institution.\u00a0 Until we find satisfying answers to this question, adding a chamber to the legislature or strengthening the power of the presidency\u00a0will not solve our current policy challenges.<\/p>\n
The Oyu Tolgoi Investment Agreement is another puzzle.\u00a0 We all debate over the Oyu Tolgoi shares and our discussions are\u00a0seemingly influenced by a temporary economic crisis and populist politics.\u00a0 Even if the parliament provided rights for its governmental negotiating team, it did not initiate a non-partisan study in regards with the strategic mines, including Oyu Tolgoi.\u00a0 The policy-making process for\u00a0Oyu Tolgoi could serve us a good policy-making tool to educate our policy community how to deal with multi-national corporations, foreign state-owned enterprises, and domestic investors.\u00a0 Instead of revoking the past investment agreement decisions, we need to learn from our mistakes and successes and work forward to improve the policy-making process.\u00a0 Without substantial, non-partisan studies, we could not improve our policies.<\/p>\n
Unless our policies address the primary cause of the problem and provide expectations at various phases of the policy implementation, we will not succeed and all will end up as losers.\u00a0 So, we need to ask hard questions – why and then to find how solutions.\u00a0 For example, our parliamentarians along with foreign and domestic investors declared their successful changes in the major mining investment legislations (including the windfall profit tax, protection against the state-owned enterprises).\u00a0 But, they did not address why they had these laws on the first place.\u00a0 Yes, no one will challenge them during the bust cycle.\u00a0 Since they didn’t ask hard questions and find solutions for these ad-hoc policies, no one could guarentee – these are permanent solutions.\u00a0 If you don’t ask hard questions and agree on acceptable solutions – including the nationalist politicians and civil society actors, problems will recur and trigger the another circle of the blame game.<\/p>\n
So, let’s ask and answer hard questions together on major policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Government policies should provide solutions to our problems. They\u00a0reduce uncertainty by building trust among all players.\u00a0 But, in Mongolia’s\u00a0case, policies have been\u00a0fragile, unstable, and unpredictable.\u00a0 Overall, our policies increase uncertainty and build mistrust among ourselves and our partners. What do … Continue reading