Ulan Bator - Mongolia's former Communist rulers have been swept back to power in a landslide election victory, state media said yesterday, crushing the forces that helped usher in democracy a decade ago. State radio said the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) had won 72 of 76 seats filled in Sunday's parliamentary election.
Political analysts said the MPRP, which ruled for seven decades under Soviet patronage, was likely to slow the pace of capitalist-style reform in the impoverished Asian nation. It was riding a wave of popular anger against political gridlock under the Democratic Union coalition government and economic austerity measures imposed by the IMF, which have plunged many of Mongolia's 2.4 million people into poverty in a landlocked nation the size of western Europe.