ULAN BATOR (AFP) — Amid Soviet tenements and glassy high rises, Rintsen Naranchimeg feels right at home inside her "democracy yurt".
A volunteer for Mongolia's Democratic Party, she has manned the felt tent for the better part of three weeks, disseminating party propaganda and educating young voters in the run-up to Sunday's election.
More than 400 candidates are vying for 76 seats in the Great Hural, the nation's parliament.
"The Democrats are the best party for the country," Naranchimeg informed a pair of pensioners who wandered in from busy Peace Avenue. "They brought us democracy and freedom."
Nearly two decades after Mongolia gave up communism in favor of democratic reforms and capitalism, people still recall with gratitude the young students, intellectuals and dissidents who helped usher in the age of democracy.
Mongolia, with just 2.6 million people spread across a landscape the size of Alaska, is now trying to elbow its way into the globalised world.
It sends peacekeeping troops to Iraq and Sierra Leone, supports a robust civil society movement and encourages freedom of the press.
Few take the new freedoms for granted and voter turnout regularly tops 80 percent. Nomads from the vast steppes to the Gobi Desert may ride 30 or 40 kilometres (20 or 25 miles) on horseback to reach a polling station.
In past elections the fickle electorate generally sided with the opposition. This time, however, there is no opposition.
In the 2004 election the Democrats wound up virtually tied with their main rival, the ex-communist Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP). The two parties have since been locked in an uneasy coalition.
"The national unity government did not get the people's business done," said US businessman Peter Morrow, the CEO of Khan Bank, Mongolia's biggest.
"I don't think that many of those politicians would disagree with that. They are all as frustrated as everyone else."
Neither side seems to have an advantage in this election either. Polls by the non-profit Sant Maral Foundation show a dead heat between the two big parties, each controlling about 25 percent of the vote.
Around 15 percent of voters prefer independent candidates and smaller parties while a third of those polled were undecided.
Rather than searching for ideological differences, the Democrats have tried appealing to voters' pocket books, promising to dole out one million togrog (864 dollars) to every citizen. Upon hearing this, the MPRP raised the stakes to 1.5 million togrog (1,293 dollars).
"Either way, the people win," said Dagdan Baljinyam, 58, who visited the Democratic Party yurt. "It's money that can really help people that are struggling."
And people are struggling. One third of the population lives on two dollars a day, infrastructure is inadequate and derelict suburbs are spreading across the capital, filled with migrants in search of work.
But the economy is definitely on an upward march, thanks mainly to surging prices of its major commodities, copper and gold. Last year the gross domestic product grew by 9.9 percent.
"The country is experiencing unseen tide of development," said MPRP secretary general Yondon Otogonbayar.
"Our party platform promises a lot more infrastructure development. We'll connect all the provincial capitals to paved roads and build flyovers in Ulan Bator to reduce traffic."
More economic gains are expected with the development of Oyu Tolgoi, an enormous copper deposit in the Gobi Desert, valued at 38 billion dollars.
But progress on the mine stalled when the primary investor, Canada-based Ivanhoe Mines, was unable to sign a final contract with the government, blaming a heavy windfall tax slapped on mining companies in 2006.
Attempting to regain investor confidence, the government recently tried backpedalling on the tax but parliament could not approve the changes by its final session. The legislation will be on the onus of the next parliament.
"We know the tax caused a decrease in mining," admitted Otgonbayar. "If we don't find a proper balance fast enough foreigners may feel fatigue from frequently changing laws. We need more stability."
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