Category World News

Mongolian Prime Minister Gombojav Zandanshatar has stepped down after only four months as leader of the country, after receiving a crushing vote of no confidence from politicians, the country’s parliament has announced.

Mongolia’s 126-seat national parliament, the State Great Khural, held the vote on Friday in which a reported 111 members of parliament cast their ballots, with 71 supporting Zandanshatar’s dismissal and 40 opposing, according to a parliamentary statement.

On October 10, more than 50 members of the legislature submitted a motion to have Zandanshatar dismissed from his post, citing constitutional violations and concerns about governance, according to reports, with the prime minister’s recent appointment of a new minister of justice and home affairs at the centre of the controversy.

The MPs said Zandanshatar’s appointment was carried out unilaterally, without consultation with parliament as required under the Mongolian constitution, and had undermined “the principle of the separation of state powers”.

“[The appointment] encroached on the powers of the President of Mongolia and the State Great Khural, violates the fundamental principles of the constitution, and violates the principle of the rule of law,” parliamentarians said in a statement at the time.

A second criticism of Zandanshatar concerned his public statements about an ongoing investigation, which allegedly undermined judicial independence and the right to the presumption of innocence, while a third alleged that changes he made to pricing mechanisms for major mineral exporters fostered unfair competition.

It was only four months ago that Mongolian lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in the 55-year-old, Russian-educated economist and former vice-director of one of the country’s largest commercial banks.

Zandanshatar replaced former Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai, who was also forced out of office after weeks of protests prompted by reports of lavish spending by his son, which morphed into wider public anger at the country’s political elites.

The landlocked country in northeast Asia – sandwiched between superpowers China and Russia – has endured deep-seated corruption for decades, with wealthy elites facing public anger for hoarding the profits of a years-long coal mining boom.

Luvsannamsrai – who also lost a vote of confidence in parliament in June, before offering his resignation – warned at the time that his removal could lead to further instability in the still-young democracy.

He said if the political situation becomes “unstable, the economic situation deteriorates, and political parties cannot come to consensus” then that could put Mongolia’s “democratic parliamentary system at risk of collapse”.

Peru’s new president, Jose Jeri, is refusing to resign amid Gen Z antigovernment protests, inflamed by the death of a popular rapper, as crime grips the nation.

The government said late on Thursday that a state of emergency would be declared in the capital, Lima, as the prosecutor’s office announced it was investigating the previous day’s killing of 32-year-old protester and hip-hop singer Eduardo Ruiz in a mass demonstration.

Peru’s police chief, General Oscar Arriola, said that Luis Magallanes, a member of the force, was believed to have fired the bullet and had subsequently been detained and dismissed from his job. Arriola added that Magallanes was being treated in hospital after being physically assaulted.

Ruiz was the first person to die in the protests, which began a month ago with calls for better pensions and wages for young people and later became a lightning rod for broader frustrations with crime and corruption, culminating in the ouster of former President Dina Boluarte last week.

On Wednesday, thousands massed around the country, with hundreds clashing with police outside Congress in Lima, as they called on recently appointed Jeri, the seventh president in less than a decade, to resign.

“My responsibility is to maintain the stability of the country; that is my responsibility and my commitment,” Jeri told the local media after visiting Peru’s parliament, where he said he would request powers to combat crime.

Jeri expressed regret over Ruiz’s death in a post on X, saying the death would be “objectively” investigated. He blamed violence on “delinquents who infiltrated a peaceful demonstration to sow chaos”.

“The full force of the law will be on them,” he wrote.

Reporting from Lima, Al Jazeera’s Mariana Sanchez said that Ruiz’s death had “added another layer to the ongoing political crisis” in the country and had “angered even more Peruvians who are frustrated with the corruption, with the insecurity in the country”.

“He was peacefully hanging out with his friends. Unfortunately, the bullet hit his chest. We want justice for him,” activist Milagros Samillan told Al Jazeera.

The prosecutor’s office wrote on X that it had ordered the removal of Ruíz’s body from a Lima hospital and the “collection of audiovisual and ballistic evidence in the area where the incident occurred, in the context of serious human rights violations”.

The new leader of Japan’s governing party, Sanae Takaichi, has decided not to visit a controversial World War II shrine in Tokyo, as uncertainty remains over whether she will be appointed prime minister ahead of a visit by United States President Donald Trump before the end of the month.

Takaichi, 64, seen as an arch-conservative from the right of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has previously visited the Yasukuni Shrine, including as a government minister.

However, Takaichi opted on Friday to send an offering, and reports said she was likely to refrain from visiting in order not to antagonise the country’s neighbours whom Imperial Japan had occupied and committed atrocities against in the first half of the 20th century.

Past visits by top leaders to Yasukuni, which honours convicted war criminals, have angered China and South Korea. The last visit by a Japanese premier was in 2013 by the late Shinzo Abe, Takaichi’s mentor.

Takaichi’s decision not to visit the shrine came as Japan’s former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, best known for making a statement apologising for atrocities Japan committed in Asia over the course of World War II, died aged 101.

Murayama, in office from 1994 to 1996, issued the 1995 “Murayama statement” on the 50th anniversary of Japan’s unconditional surrender.

Murayama died on Friday at a hospital in his hometown, Oita, in southwestern Japan, according to a statement from Mizuho Fukushima, head of Japan’s Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Hiroyuki Takano, secretary-general of the SDP in Oita, told the AFP news agency he had been informed that Murayama died of old age.

Political wrangling

Takaichi became LDP leader on October 4, but her aim to become Japan’s first female prime minister was derailed after the LDP’s coalition partner of 26 years, the Komeito party, pulled the plug on their alliance last week.

The LDP is now in talks about forming a different alliance, boosting Takaichi’s chances of becoming premier in a parliamentary vote that local media reports said will likely happen on Tuesday.

The clock is ticking for Takaichi to become Japan’s fifth prime minister in as many years with Trump’s impending visit.

Details of Washington and Tokyo’s trade deal remain unresolved and Trump – who had warm relations with Abe in his first term – wants Japan to stop Russian energy imports and boost defence spending.

Komeito said that the LDP has failed to tighten rules on party funding following a damaging slush fund scandal involving dodgy payments of millions of dollars.

The LDP this week began talks on forming a new coalition with the Japan Innovation Party instead.

The two parties would be two seats short of a majority but the alliance would still likely ensure that Takaichi succeeds in becoming premier.

A spanner in the works could be if opposition parties agreed on a rival candidate but talks earlier this week appeared to make little headway.