The Purse and the Fury: A Dior Bag Brings Down Mongolia’s Government
NEED TO KNOW
The Purse and the Fury: A Dior Bag Brings Down Mongolia’s Government
MONGOLIA
When the Mongolian prime minister’s son posted photos of his extravagant lifestyle, he was doing what young people across the world do – bragging on social media.
But he probably didn’t intend those images of expensive cars, vacations, clothing, diamonds, and Dior bags to go viral and set off weeks of furious protests, forcing the government to its knees.
But that’s what happened after young Mongolians began wondering how the 23-year-old Temuulen had accumulated such wealth, particularly because Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai has also long played up his modest rural roots.
Those thousands of angry demonstrators said such displays show the disconnect between the arrogant ruling elite and the average Mongolian, who is struggling to get by, while highlighting the vast problem of corruption in the country.
“With no visible sources of income, their display of luxury bags, private travel, and high-end living was a blatant slap in the face to the average Mongolian citizen,” Amina, 28, a protester, told CNN. “The cost of living in Mongolia has skyrocketed – many people are paying nearly half of their monthly income in taxes while barely making enough to cover food, rent, or utilities. Most are not living paycheck to paycheck anymore – they’re living loan to loan, debt to debt.”
Last week, as a result of the fury, Oyun-Erdene resigned.
Insisting he had done nothing wrong and that both he and his son would cooperate with the anti-corruption agency investigating their financials, the prime minister, who was reelected in 2024 for his second term, stepped down after he lost a vote of confidence in the legislature.
Mongolia, a landlocked country of 3.5 million people wedged between China and Russia, has vast amounts of mineral wealth such as coal, copper, gold, and uranium, even as its population struggles with poverty and skyrocketing inflation.
At the same time, it has long grappled with corruption: Over the past decade, numerous protests have ignited over allegations that government officials and the business elite have gotten rich from siphoning off public funds and, even when caught, are rarely punished.
The 2024 Freedom House’s Freedom in the World index describes corruption, particularly involving the mining industry, as “endemic in Mongolia.” It added that the country’s anticorruption laws “are vaguely written and infrequently enforced.”
The US has targeted Mongolian officials for graft, too: For example, in 2024, the US Attorney’s Office filed a complaint to confiscate two New York apartments bought by former Mongolian Prime Minister Batbold Sükhbaatar after they were allegedly paid for by “diverted proceeds from lucrative mining contracts” and bought in order to “launder money.”
Still, analysts say there is an irony to protesters calling for Oyun-Erdene to resign over corruption allegations: His coalition government had been attempting to diversify the economy, which is dependent on mining, and break the hold of mining oligarchs. In April 2024, Mongolia passed the Sovereign Wealth Fund law, which would take a 34 percent stake in mines considered to have strategic mineral deposits and redistribute a portion of the profits into financial assistance, healthcare, education, and housing, according to the Mongolian news agency, Montsame. He had also pledged to halve the poverty rate to 15 percent by the end of the decade.
Even as some voters recognized and applauded these efforts, the country’s mining elite, however, have not been happy, and analysts believe they are behind the fall of the government. The prime minister himself warned of a “spider’s web” of special interests as he resigned, saying that “there has been a deliberate attempt to undermine” the reforms of the coalition government by a “hostile campaign” that would “turn Mongolia away from a parliamentary democracy and return power and wealth to a small group driven by self-interest.”
Now, some worry over the future of Mongolia’s democracy: A single-party communist state until its revolution in 1990, it became a parliamentary democracy but has a long history of political instability. Analysts say it must fix that issue if it wants to attract more investment and diversify its economic and foreign policy away from its dependence on China and Russia.
“When it took office, the coalition government was a fresh face for Mongolia,” wrote analyst Bolor Lkhaajav in the Diplomat. “Protests are a healthy democratic function, where the youth assemble and voice their concerns. However, there are still reasonable grounds for concern over the stability of the Mongolian government amid opportunistic political shenanigans.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Former Student Kills Ten in Austrian School Shooting
AUSTRIA
A gunman killed 10 people, including teenagers, and injured at least 12 others in a mass shooting at a secondary school in Austria’s second-largest city of Graz on Tuesday in one of the worst rampages in the country’s history, Reuters reported.
The police have not publicly identified the shooter or the victims but local media reported that he was a 21-year-old former student who entered the BORG Dreierschützengasse school and started shooting at students in two classrooms, one of which had been his own, according to Al Jazeera.
The suspect used two weapons, a shotgun and a pistol, to carry out the killing spree before fatally shooting himself in a bathroom, authorities said, declining to provide a motive. However, the Salzburger Nachrichten newspaper said the shooter had been a victim of bullying.
The mass shooting shocked the country. “The rampage at a school in Graz is a national tragedy that has deeply shaken our entire country,” Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said in a statement posted on X, announcing three days of mourning for the victims. “There are no words for the pain and grief.”
Julia Ebner, an extremism expert at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank, said the attack was likely the worst school shooting in Austria’s post-war history, describing such shootings as rare compared with other countries, such as the United States.
Austrians are one of the most heavily armed civilian populations in Europe, with data showing 30 firearms per 100 residents, even as gun violence is uncommon.
But automatic weapons are banned, while revolvers, pistols, and semi-automatic weapons are allowed with official authorization. Rifles and shotguns are allowed with a firearm or a hunting license, or for members of traditional shooting clubs.
Officials believe the gunman legally owned the two weapons he used.
Peru Bars Ex-President from Leaving Amid Corruption Probe
PERU
A Peruvian judge this week barred former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski from leaving the country amid an ongoing corruption investigation, a case that has reignited debate about judicial overreach in the Andean nation, MercoPress reported.
Over the weekend, immigration officials stopped Kuczynski at Lima’s Jorge Chávez International Airport as he attempted to board a flight to the United States.
The former leader had planned to undergo a series of medical checks and reunite with his wife, whom he has not seen in seven years.
Kuczynski’s lawyers criticized the move as “administrative kidnapping” and unconstitutional, claiming there was no valid court order in place to block his travel at the time.
But on Sunday, Judge Margarita Salcedo issued a formal 18-month travel ban, citing the seriousness of the charges against him, according to Andina, the Peruvian government’s news agency.
Kuczynski is under investigation for aggravated money laundering, procedural fraud, and false declarations related to his 2016 presidential campaign.
Prosecutors also allege he received over $100,000 from a company tied to the so-called “Construction Club” and from proxy firms allegedly linked to Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht – the latter known for its sprawling bribery scandal across Latin America.
The episode has further fueled national debate over political corruption and how best to hold leaders accountable.
While some Peruvians see the travel restriction as essential to pursuing justice, others view it as another example of judicial persecution of political figures.
Other former presidents – including Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala – have also faced high-profile legal battles in recent years.
At the same time, Peru has jailed so many former leaders that it has been short of space at the special prison that houses them.
Samoa Government Collapses, New Election in August
SAMOA
Samoans will head to the polls on Aug. 29, six months earlier than expected, after Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata‘afa’s government collapsed following a budget defeat in parliament late last month, the Associated Press reported.
Fiamē, who became the South Pacific island nation’s first female prime minister in 2021 and ended four decades of Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) rule, now faces a three-way political battle that has ramifications far beyond Samoa, the newswire added.
Fiamē’s Faʻatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) government fractured earlier this year after she fired party chairman La‘auli Leuatea Polataivao from the cabinet over criminal charges. The move triggered a party split.
While Fiamē survived two no-confidence votes, a joint effort by the HRPP and former FAST members to block the budget led to the dissolution of parliament and an early election, according to Radio New Zealand. Now, Fiamē is the head of the newly formed Samoa Uniting Party, going against the HRPP and La‘auli’s rebranded FAST.
This snap election takes place at a time of renewed geopolitical interest in the South Pacific, where Samoa is viewed as a crucial player in the intensifying competition for regional influence between China and traditional partners, such as Australia and the US.
Samoa is also highly vulnerable to climate change, as the 200,000-person archipelago is among the world’s most endangered by rising seas.
DISCOVERIES
Shrink or Die
Some animals cope with heat by burrowing underground. Others take to the water or even roll in mud. Clownfish (Amphiprion percula), however, have a more unusual way of dealing with increasingly high temperatures: They shrink themselves.
That was the result of a new study on how this coral reef species copes with environmental changes. As part of the research, scientists repeatedly measured 134 wild fish in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea, during a marine heatwave that started in March 2023, which is part of an ongoing global mass bleaching phenomenon, the Conversation explained.
They found that 100 of the fish in the sample shrank from February to August 2023. Additionally, the fish that shrank had a better chance of making it out of the heatwave alive.
“This is not just about getting skinnier under stressful conditions, these fish are actually getting shorter,” said lead study author Melissa Versteeg in a statement.
Clownfish live in social groups within anemones on coral reefs, and they rarely leave their “home” as it protects them from predators. However, never leaving the anemone also means that these fish can’t escape to cooler regions as marine heatwaves on coral reefs become increasingly common due to rising global temperatures.
Considering that clownfish are vertebrates, scientists were surprised to discover that they can shrink in response to heat stress because growth in vertebrate beings is generally considered unidirectional.
Getting smaller might also seem counterintuitive, as it makes animals more vulnerable to predators and less likely to reproduce.
For clownfish during heatwaves, however, becoming smaller turned out to be more beneficial for survival because they needed less food, and became more efficient at foraging for food and also at using oxygen, which exists in lower quantities in hot water.
Clownfish social groups are based on strict hierarchies based on size, so shrinking is a tricky move and risks throwing off the balance of the group, which could lead to a fish being evicted – which usually results in death.
On each anemone, the largest clownfish is female and the second largest is male, and together they make up a breeding pair. To prevent fights, males adjust their growth to keep the size ratio fixed.
The study results showed that the breeding pairs where both clownfish shrank were more likely to survive the heatwave compared with those where only one, or neither, did.
While some of the fish in the sample didn’t survive the heat, all of the fish that shrank multiple times did, and the results showed that shrinking just once increased the survival probability during the heatwave by 78 percent.
“We don’t know yet exactly how they do it, but we do know that a few other animals can do this too,” said Versteeg. “For example, marine iguanas can reabsorb some of their bone material to also shrink during times of environmental stress.”