page_title: Punsalmaagiin Ochirbat
section_title: 1993 presidential election
hierarchical_section_title: Punsalmaagiin Ochirbat / Early life and career / 1993 presidential election
caption_attribution_description: English: ULAN BATOR. President Putin with Mongolian President Natsagiyn Bagabandi.Русский: УЛАН-БАТОР. С Президентом Монголии Нацагийном Багабанди.
context_page_description: Punsalmaagiin Ochirbat is a Mongolian political figure and a current member of the Constitutional Court of Mongolia. He served as a president of Mongolia from 1990 to 1997, the first to be elected by direct popular vote.
context_section_description: Although Ochirbat strongly advocated policies of rapid national revitalization and economic reform to break the country from its socialist past and adopt capitalism by the year 2000, he had a reputation for flexibility and willingness to compromise and his persuasiveness helped diffuse confrontations and political crises in the lead up to the first free elections in June 1993.  Nevertheless, ideological splits within the MPRP lead the party leadership to reject Ochirbat as their presidential candidate and instead nominate hardliner Lodongiin Tüdev, editor in chief of the communist newspaper Ünen.  Sensing an opportunity, a coalition of opposition parties, including the National Democrats and Social Democratic party, nominated Ochirbat as their candidate. On June 6, 1993, Ochirbat soundly defeated Tudev, winning 57.8 percent of the vote to become the first president ever elected by popular vote in Mongolia.
  Ochirbat's term in office was beset by a series of political and economic crises. By the end of 1993, Ochirbat had become a harsh critic of government's failure to address the country's worsening economic situation. The country suffered food and energy shortages and high inflation. Ochirbat accused the government of not meeting its social welfare obligations. He was also critical of the Mongolian Intelligence services for failing to prevent the rise of transnational organized crime in Mongolia. He blamed over burdensome local and central bureaucracies for blocking faster economic improvement and called for reducing the overall size of the bureaucracy and speeding up privatization of government owned assets. By 1995 only 19.2% of economy had been privatized.
  When in March 1994 opposition parties withdrew from parliament, Ochirbat publicly called for a protection of the rights of the minority parties and accused the ruling MPRP of exploiting the media to their advantage by limiting press coverage of parliament. He also supported reforms to election law to open elections to all parties in advance of parliamentary elections in 1996. In 1994, he vetoed a parliamentary decree to promote Cyrillic script in Mongolia and delay introduction of classical script.
  In foreign affairs, Ochirbat called for a re-orientation of Mongolian foreign policy to broaden international cooperation with all nations, especially with Mongolia's two powerful neighbors China and Russia.  He rejected the transport and stationing of weapons of mass destruction in Mongolia, and declared Mongolia a nuclear free zone.  In 1994 Ochirbat undertook official visits to South and Southeast Asia, signed cooperation agreements with India and Laos, and obtained financial assistance from Thailand to address the food shortage crisis. Ochirbat was the first Mongolian leader ever to officially visit the United States as well as the first Mongolian head of state in 30 years to visit Beijing, although relations with China suffered in autumn of 1995 when workers at the Mongolian embassy in Beijing discovered electronic bugs that had presumably been in place more than 10 years.
caption: N. Bagabandi
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