Mongolian prime minister resigns after losing backing of parliament
Mongolia
prime minister Luvsannamsrai Oyun-Erdene has stepped down after losing parliamentary support following corruption claims that erupted into street protests last month, the country's parliament said on Tuesday.
The parliament of the world's largest landlocked country did not pass a draft resolution on a confidence ballot, meaning Mr Oyun-Erdene was deemed to have resigned, noted a parliament statement.
'It was an honour to serve my country and people in difficult times, including pandemics, wars, and tariffs,' said Mr Oyun-Erdene after the result of the vote became known.
Mr Oyun-Erdene, who has been prime minister since January 2021 and was re-elected in July 2024, will remain caretaker PM until a successor is named within 30 days.
READ MORE
The political upheaval comes after Mongolians last month protested for weeks in the capital Ulan Bator, alleging corruption involving Mr Oyun-Erdene and his family.
Mr Oyun-Erdene did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on his resignation and the corruption allegations.
A statement posted on the Mongolian parliament website showed Mr Oyun-Erdene thanking the country's youth for their views on transparency, and citizens for their different perspectives, but said he 'regrets that this is used as a political pretext and causing instability'.
Mr Oyun-Erdene argued he had been steadfast in fighting corruption but had focused too much on large projects instead of social and political issues.
The outgoing prime minister had pushed for infrastructure and resource development projects in the mineral-rich country, outlining 14 mega-projects including mineral processing centres, water diversion initiatives, dams and power plants. – Reuters
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
9 hours ago
- Irish Times
‘Wearing thin': Trump-Musk bromance descends into a jaw-dropping feud that is funny, dismal and nauseating
Things unravel fast. The arrangement was for chancellor Merz and the German party to spend the night across from the White House in Blair House after their Thursday visit to the Oval Office. The football enthusiasts in the visiting contingent may have intended unwinding with the highlights of the fabulous France-Spain game. But like everyone else in Washington, DC, the German visitors undoubtedly spent their late afternoon and Thursday evening glued to their screens as the once-heated connection between president Donald Trump and Elon Musk degenerated into a jaw-dropping social media feud that is funny and nauseating and dismal all at once. By nightfall, the richest man in the world had made the unsubstantiated claim, on the social media platform he owns, that president Trump is 'in the Epstein files'. He had reposted decades-old footage of Trump in the company of the late and now-reviled Epstein, whose FBI files remain a source of fascination to a strand of the Maga support base. READ MORE Musk's barrage of posts criticising the Trump budget Bill began during chancellor Merz's sit-down in the Oval Office and continued over the course of a day when his personal wealth fell by an estimated $34 billion, even as shares in Tesla slumped. Once freed from his diplomatic duties, during which Trump admired Mr Merz's facility with German and looked less than thrilled to receive a framed birth certificate of Freidrich Trump, the German grandfather of whom he never speaks, the president was free to attack Musk on his own social media account. Piqued, he noted that the 'easiest way' to save money in the budget is to 'terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts'. He also went public with an observation that had become clear over the past six weeks as Musk's prominence within the administration steadily faded. 'Elon was 'wearing thin'. I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do) and he just went CRAZY!' As ever, the drama once again sent the 47th presidency rocketing into the realm of not just a rolling television soap opera, but the darkest parody of the landmark American political dramas. With president Trump, the old line of history repeating itself doesn't fully apply: the tragedy and farce seem to occur simultaneously. Over the course of their Oval Office press spray, chancellor Merz, restrained and impressive, made several serious and sombre points about the Ukraine and Russia war but it was unclear if Trump permitted the clarity and gravity to penetrate. For much of the time, the German visitor sat silent while Trump riffed on his relationship with Musk, which was, on live television, experiencing the same return-to-Earth's-orbit fate as one of the billionaire's SpaceX rockets. By teatime, Steve Bannon, a long-time vitriolic critic of Musk, had called for his deportation. Meanwhile, the Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill tasked with meeting Trump's expectation that the budget Bill pass the Senate vote and be on his desk for his preferred deadline of July 4th, Independence Day, took stock of the spectacular feud. 'I have a rule. I never get between a dog and a fire hydrant,' the Louisiana senator John Kennedy told a reporter. Kennedy is one of several senators who want to see the Bill amended before it goes to a vote. The Republicans can afford just three defections if it is to get through the Senate. It is already clear that two senators, Kentucky's Rand Paul and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, represent a hard No to the Bill. 'The math doesn't add up,' Paul posted earlier this week. 'I'm not supporting a Bill that increases debt by $5 trillion.' Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie sounded gleeful when he was asked who he would choose in the playground fight between Trump and Musk. 'I choose math. The math always wins over the words. I trust the math over the guy who lands the rocket backwards, over the politician's maths. I think the patient is on life support and if the Senate thinks they are going to rehabilitate it and rewrite it, I think they are endangering this patient. Because people over here are looking for more reasons to be against it.' Now, with Trump's estranged 'genius' and the world's richest man seeking to sabotage the Bill with venom, it looks more fragile than ever. Even during the height of their public union, when they engaged in a public mutual seduction, with Trump attracted to Musk's limitless wealth and Musk dazzled by Trump's mass public appeal and the peerless power that comes with the presidency, it was clear to everyone that it would be short lived. But as recently as February, Musk was moved to post: 'I love Donald Trump as much as a straight man can love another man.' Perhaps he is just a rank sentimentalist at heart. But this week Musk discovered the limitations and the cold commercialism of the presidential love reciprocated. On Monday, even as reports of his rampant narcotics use circulated, Musk suffered the indignity of a going-away present of an outsized golden key which, Trump clarified, he gives to 'very special people'. It created the impression that there is a thousand identical keys crammed into a cupboard near the Oval Office. The billionaire was sporting a black eye, which he claimed he acquired while horsing around with his young son. Musk said he invited young X to 'punch me in the face' and the youngster – perhaps aware of his deteriorating future fortune – didn't hesitate in socking one to the old man. For the past four days, Musk found himself gone from the White House, his magic lanyard and access returned with nothing but a ceremonial key which opens no doors. And for all of the callous indifference to the vulnerable and impoverished Musk displayed as he set about implementing the federal cuts in his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, he may have believed that at some level Trump valued his work. The Bill proposal represents not just an additional burden to America's national debt; it is a personal snub to the man-hours Musk has put in since January. For a man with boundless intellectual vanity, to be made to feel a fool represents the worst insult. And there was a cold truth, too, to Trump's rationale as to why Musk has suddenly gone rogue on him. 'I think he misses the place. He's not the first. People leave my administration and then at some point they miss it so badly. Some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile.' The feud does not bode well for the administration. For the Democrats came the welcome novelty of watching the other crowd infighting. But the bitter and reckless war of words will ask deeper questions of the many Republicans who championed Musk during the days when he was the president's favourite courtier. And the critical decision over the big, beautiful Bill still looms. 'When 15 million people lose their health care and plunge into personal crisis,' Connecticut Democrat senator Chris Murphy wrote on Thursday evening, 'none of them are going to give a shit about a made-for-clicks twitter fight between two billionaires arguing about who gets the bigger share of the corruption spoils.' In happier days, Trump made a shrewd observation about Musk. 'He's a true patriot,' he praised. 'And I don't even know if he is a Republican.' He may be about to find out.
Irish Times
19 hours ago
- Irish Times
Can South Korea's new president unify an unhappy country?
With the election of Lee Jae-myung as president of South Korea, a period of political turmoil there may be over - for now at least. But Lee, leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, faces many challenges, including a political system in disarray, the threat of tariffs and a looming demographic disaster. Denis Staunton reports on the political situation in South Korea on today's Inside Politics podcast with Hugh Linehan.
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Donald Trump accuses Elon Musk of being ‘hostile' to his administration
Donald Trump has attacked Elon Musk , accusing his billionaire backer of being 'hostile' to his administration as a row between two of the world's most powerful men erupted into an all-out, public feud. Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, the US president said he was 'very disappointed' in Mr Musk for criticising his signature tax bill, and suggested he was trying to defend his business interests. 'He's not the first ... people leave my administration and some of them actually become hostile,' Mr Trump said of Mr Musk's broadsides in recent days. 'They leave, and they wake up in the morning, and the glamour's gone, the whole world is different, and they become hostile.' READ MORE He added: 'I'm very disappointed in Elon. I helped Elon a lot.' Mr Trump's comments bring into public a deepening row with Mr Musk that has seen the billionaire – who opposes the White House's trade war as well as the president's tax bill – and some of his allies abruptly leave the administration . Mr Musk, who in April retreated from politics because of the 'blowback' against his businesses, suggested he regretted backing Mr Trump with more than $250 million during last year's election, after the president claimed he would have won without the billionaire's cash. US president Donald Trump with Elon Musk in the Oval Office. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,' he posted on his social media site X soon after the Oval Office tirade. 'Such ingratitude.' Shares in Tesla fell by more than 6 per cent following Mr Trump's remarks. Mr Musk, who had hitherto refrained from attacking Mr Trump directly, also suggested on Thursday that the president was abandoning his principles on federal spending. The billionaire, who is upset that the tax bill now before the Senate , would increase the US deficit by trillions of dollars, highlighted old posts by Mr Trump in which he was critical of Republicans for raising the debt ceiling. He also hit back at Mr Trump's suggestion that he had opposed the 'big beautiful bill' because it axed tax credits for electric vehicles and clean energy, which have long benefited Tesla in the US. 'Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill,' Mr Musk posted. The fracture in the relationship between the former 'first buddy' and the president has now spread through Washington. Last week, Mr Trump pulled the nomination of billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman, a close ally of Mr Musk, to lead Nasa, ostensibly over contributions he had made to Democratic candidates in the past. Mr Isaacman, who was on track to receive bipartisan support from the Senate, disputed the White House's justification for the decision. 'I don't think the timing was much of a coincidence,' he told the All-In podcast on Wednesday. 'There [were] some people that had some axes to grind, I guess, and I was a good, visible target.' Mr Musk had already announced that he was stepping back from his involvement in the Trump administration, where he had led the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). He boasted that Doge would cut trillions of dollars from federal spending, although the savings so far have been much more modest. Elon Musk boasted that his cost cutting department would reduce federal spending by trillions, but the savings so far have been much more modest to date. Photograph: Eric Lee/The New York Times Steve Davis, one of Musk's lieutenants at SpaceX who led Doge on a day-to-day basis, has also now left the administration, according to a government official. More senior figures close to the billionaire were set to abandon the initiative in the coming days, the official said. Mr Musk himself has suggested that the tax bill would wipe out any savings made by Doge, which claims to have identified roughly $180 billion in cuts to date. On Wednesday, the congressional fiscal watchdog said the legislation would add $2.4 trillion to the US debt by 2034. On Thursday, Mr Musk rebuffed Mr Trump's suggestion that he had known what was in the bill and only turned on it once he had departed Washington. 'False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!' Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
