Nambaryn Enkhbayar (Mongolian: Намбарын Энхбаяр; born June 1, 1958, in Ulaanbaatar) is the current President of Mongolia. He took office on June 24, 2005 after winning the May 2005 elections.
Enkhbayar is the ex-chairman of former communist party - Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP). Enkhbayar was the Prime Minister of Mongolia from 2000 until 2004 and Speaker of Parliament between 2004 and 2005.
He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Literature in 1980 and also attended English language courses at Leeds University in England in 1990s. He worked for the Mongolian Writer's Union from 1980 to 1990 as a translator-editor, a secretary general and a vice president. He translated Buddhist teachings into Mongolian.
Enkhbayar was elected as a member of the State Great Khural (the Mongolian parliament) in 1992 and served as minister of culture from 1992 to 1996. In 1997, he became the leader of the opposition post-communist Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, which he had joined in 1985. There, he led his party to victory in 2000 elections. On 26 July 2000, he was unanimously elected as the prime minister in the Parliament with 72 MPRP members out of 76 seats. He is credited with the revitalization of his party. His party lost almost half of its seats in the elections of 2004, and in August 2004, he entered a coalition with opposition parties and became the Speaker of Parliament.
He worked as the Prime Minister of Mongolia between 2000 and 2004. Enkhbayar is harshly criticized because of allegations of corruption in his government. A large group of Mongolians have demonstrated against him and demanded his resignation, While serving as prime minister of Mongolia, without disclosing the details to Mongolian public, Enkhbayar suddenly settled Mongolia's controversial debt to the former Soviet Union with Russia's Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on December 31, 2003 at USD 250 million. Russia now claims that they got USD 200 million from Mongolia and 50 million USD disappeared from this deal between Enkhbayar and Kasyanov. For this deal, Enkhbayar borrowed USD 50 million from Ivanhoe Mines as a government T-bond with a high interest rate. His critics believe that the Soviet Union's claims on Mongolia, which it had used as a raw material supplier, are not legitimate without reasonable records.
In the presidential elections on May 22, 2005, Enkhbayar was elected to succeed Natsagiin Bagabandi with 53.4 percent of the vote. His main rival, Mendsaikhany Enkhsaikhan of the Mongolian Democratic Party, collected 20 percent of the vote. |
