HIGH over the Gobi desert the Mongolian Prime Minister opens the helicopter window, makes mock pistols with his hands, and points them at the sand dunes.

“You can hunt wild animals from up here,” Nambaryn Enkhbayar says. Then he falls silent, staring in wonder at an expanse of land so vast that no man could possibly claim to rule it all.

Mr Enkhbayar is on the campaign trail, and it is some trail. Mongolia is the size of Western Europe and has a population of just 2.5 million people. It has only 500 miles of paved roads, and it is possible to ride 2,000 miles from east to west without encountering a single man-made obstacle.

His ambitious election platform may change that. He wants to turn the world’s last great nomad nation into a modern, industrial society. The former Communist protégé believes that traditional pastoralism is no longer viable and aims to urbanise 90 per cent of the population.

During a campaign break in the desert outpost of Bayanhongor, Mr Enkhbayar gloried in early signs of success. He sat on a park bench on the edge of the Gobi and made a call on his Ericsson mobile phone. “It’s not a secure line,” he said, “but at least there is one.”

But not all his people are as happy. At a rally for newly settled voters, men in traditional del robes list their complaints. On the steppes, they say, they never had to worry about domestic refuse. They ask the Prime Minister for beds and tables as they are no longer moving constantly with their gers, or tents, and want to live in greater comfort.

Mr Enkhbayar said he first realised that his country faced transformation when he studied literature at Leeds University in the mid-1980s and suddenly had access to uncensored media. “There was the Chernobyl disaster and the talks between Reagan and Gorbachev,” he said. “I knew even Mongolia would be affected by these events.” During his stay in Britain, Mr Enkhbayar translated Wells, Dickens and Joyce into his mother tongue. “I was stupid enough to try to turn Joyce’s prose into Mongolian,” he said.

Back home he began rising in the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, which reigned continuously from 1921 until 1996, making it the world’s longest-ruling political party.

After four years in opposition after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ex-Communists regained power in 2000 with a new social-democratic agenda and a new logo, the yin and yang sign superposed on the rose of the Socialist International. And they had a new leader in Mr Enkhbayar.

His years in Leeds helped him to bond with Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary and a fellow alumnus, but hardly prepared him for the challenge of running a country for which overflight fees from foreign airlines are the single biggest sources of national income. Nor did Leeds prepare him for the problems of campaigning in a country where the biggest difficulty is not how to interest voters — turnouts can exceed 90 per cent — but how to reach them.

There are no telephones or televisions. Accurate opinion polls are impossible. “Sometimes you have to drive 100 kilometres between gers to talk to voters. It’s a really slow process,” one parliamentary candidate said.

In Bayanhongor a group of 60 enthusiastic voters said that they had travelled several days on horseback to attend the Prime Minister’s rally. “I came together with my next door neighbour,” one said. “His ger is only 30 kilometres from mine.”

Mongolia’s vast distances make the Prime Minister’s helicopter a vital asset. He sits by the emergency exit on the Russian-built MI8, carrying a black leather bag bearing the inscription “Air Force One” — a gift from President Bush who is grateful for Mongolia sending troops to Iraq.

Mr Enkhbayar is spending the weeks before the June 27 election sweeping across the country, alighting wherever there are human clusters, addressing lone riders who ask questions from horseback. Between stops the Prime Minister reads a book on Genghis Khan and reviews press clippings. His G-Shock wrist watch is 15 minutes fast thanks to his playful children but what matters in Mongolia is space, not time.

On one stop this week, Mr Enkhbayar bounded out of the helicopter to inaugurate a new power line and tout his pet project, called the Millennium Road. It will be the first strip of tarmac to run the length of Mongolia, another giant leap towards urbanisation.

Mr Enkhbayar admits that Mongolian democracy is not perfect. “Unfortunately we have problems with human rights . . . there is vote-buying . . . some judges take money from private companies.”

His opponents in Ulan Bator, the capital, scoff at such apparent humility. “It’s always the former Communist leaders, here and in Eastern Europe, who speak about democracy better than anyone,” said Elbegdorj Tsakhia, a member of the Democratic Party who was briefly Prime Minister in 1998. “But it’s all talk.”

The opposition claims that after its return to power in 2000, Mr Enkhbayar’s party set out to re-establish its absolute hold on the system.

It says that freedom of expression has been curtailed, critics are threatened by the secret police, and procedural rules ensure that the party dominates the legislature.

It also claims the party has retained its vast resources from Communist days, including property, media holdings and accessories of power such as the priceless helicopter.

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