PHOTO: Urdupoint.com
On Friday, January 25, 39 lawmakers in the 76-seat unicameral parliament of Mongolia submitted an official letter calling for the dismissal of Parliament Speaker Miyegombo Enkhbold due to an alleged abuse of power.
Luvsannamsrai Oyun-Erdene, one of the lawmakers who submitted the letter, said at a press conference that “we submitted the letter in connection with a scandal that some senior officials of the ruling Mongolian People’s Party, including Enkhbold, allegedly used their government positions as a tool to run in the parliamentary election in 2016.”
Majority of lawmakers have sent in similar letters and boycotted planetary sessions starting from 2018, but Enkhbold rejected demands for him to resign. The Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh also submitted a request to the constitutional court on November 29, 2018 to dismiss Enkhbold.
In response, Enkhbold sent the letters to the Parliament’s Standing Committee on State Structure for consideration, and the committee declined to consider the demand “as it was contrary to the law on dismissing the speaker of the parliament”.
According to Mongolian law, there were five legal grounds to dismiss a parliamentary speaker, namely death, severe disease, appointment to another position, guilty of a crime, and decision of dismissal from the constitutional court.
But an amendment initiated by Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga came into force on January 25, 2019, adding the sixth legal ground for dismissal of a parliamentary speaker. The amendment called for the dismissal of the Parliamentary Speaker if more than half of the 76 lawmakers submitted a proposal asking him to leave.
BY MSEAP Cyber Secretariat (mseap@assembly.go.kr)
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