14 Feb 2007: ISS Today: Lesotho Goes to the Polls on 17 February

14 February 2007: Lesotho Goes to the Polls on 17 February

 

Maseru - Lesotho`s cabinet has called general elections for February 17, a move analysts said appeared to be designed to prevent further cracks in the ruling party governing the impoverished African kingdom. A cabinet statement was issued five days after Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili dissolved parliament on November 24. Opposition parties voiced unhappiness with the date, saying it was too soon to organise and campaign properly in the country, a mountainous kingdom of about 1.9 million people completely surrounded by South African territory. "We had hoped elections would be held by at least May since there are still pending issues that need to be resolved," said Thomas Thabane, leader of newly formed opposition All Basotho Convention (ABC)."We were still engaged in negotiations with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to discuss preparations for elections," he said. Lesotho’s law requires that an election must be held within 90 days of parliament being dissolved. Voter registration will also end within seven days of the announcement, meaning the rolls will close by December 8. A political analyst with the Transformation Resource Centre in Maseru, Mabusetsa Lenka said Mosisili had to call for snap elections to avoid further breakaways within the LCD, which now has just 61 parliamentary seats against 59 for opposition members. Thabane, formerly the minister of communications, broke away from the LCD with 17 other members of parliament to form the ABC in October. The IEC`s director of elections Khothatso Ralitsie said officials would work to make the polls a success”.

(Bethuel Thai, Published on the Web by IOL on 2006-11-30)

 

Commentary

 

On 17 February 2007, Lesotho is set to hold general elections, the fourth such event since democracy was restored to this mountain kingdom in 1993 following seven years of military rule. The Kingdom of Lesotho, which gained its independence from Britain on 4 October 1966, is best described as a constitutional monarchy with an unstable democracy. The monarch, King Letsie III, serves in a largely ceremonial function.

 

 It can be argued that the instability that obtains in this country can be traced to its historically shaky political structure. As election day draws nearer, greater attention is being focused on this tiny independent enclave within the Republic of South Africa, anxiously hoping that the debacle that occurred after the 1998 elections does not recur in this small mountainous kingdom.

 

Civil unrest in 1998, led to the chaotic deployment of an intervention force made up of troops from South Africa and Botswana, under the auspices of the SADC. This action, code-named ‘Operation BOLEAS’, eventually quashed an incipient mutiny and accompanying dissent, but 75 lives were lost, including those of a dozen South Africa soldiers, leaving a devastated capital in the process. The two armies were part of a troika, with Zimbabwe, on a mission to bolster Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili’s government, at the latter`s request. After the civil unrest had been ended, an Interim Political Authority (IPA) was set up to review the electoral code and recommend changes to it. From its findings it was agreed that the general election, on 25 May 2002, would be based on a system that retained the existing 80 first-past-the-post constituency seats, but was supplemented by an additional 40 seats allocated on a proportional basis. Under the system, the party with the largest number of elected candidates will get the biggest share of the 40 extra seats. According to the country`s constitution, the leader of the majority party in the National Assembly automatically becomes prime minister. Most observers believed that this would create a more representative parliament in Lesotho, which would include minority parties, thus preventing the recurrence of the sort of protests that occurred after the 1998 elections.

 

The 2007 elections are important, not just for this country but also for the Southern African region. These polls will be seen as the litmus test of whether the conflict resolution initiatives introduced by the SADC Troika as a means of creating a more inclusive political system, based on the participation of citizens in decision-making processes and consolidation of democratic practices and institutions, has worked. An indication of the sub-region’s continued interest in Lesotho was evident in the early January visit to this country by the SADC Ministerial Troika of the Organ for Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation. The Troika convened in Lesotho for consultations with the various political stakeholders. The purpose of these meetings was to review and assess the political situation in the country, with a view to creating a conducive political environment crucial for holding peaceful, transparent, free and fair elections.

 

The successful conduct of these elections is also important because Lesotho will be the seventh country to use the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Elections, adopted in 2004, to run them. Other member states where the guidelines have already been used are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mauritius, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

 

During the consultative meetings, the chairperson of the Ministerial Troika of the Organ and then Tanzanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Asha-Rose Migiro, stressed the need and urgency for all political stakeholders to commit themselves to the electoral process for the betterment of the country and its citizens as well as for regional stability. Migiro is now deputy secretary-general of the United Nations.

 

On the surface it would appear that all is in place for the up-coming election, which will give some 920,000 registered voters an opportunity to choose members of parliament. This election has see 16,750 new voters registered since the 2002 general elections. There are 19 political parties vying for the 80 constituencies to be contested on a first-past-the-post electoral system. The two front-runners are the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) led by Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili and the newly formed All Basotho Convention (ABC). Former communications minister, Thomas Thabane, who, together with 18 other parliamentarians, resigned from the LCD government after complaining of non-delivery, formed the ABC in October.

 

Early indications indicate that the ABC could mount a credible challenge to the LCD continued parliamentary dominance.

 

Therefore, even though things may seem to be going well in Lesotho there is still potential for disturbances should the political peace not be preserved and respected. This is because the structural problems in Lesotho’s political system by and large still remain unresolved, and may still cause future political instability. The mixed member proportional system of elections may weaken the parliamentary system and allowed for frequent changes of government. Even though this system provides for the inclusion of minor parties and marginalised groups, it may also further reinforce the fragmented nature of Lesotho’s politics, as parliamentary seats are distributed more thinly across the political spectrum.

 

The threat of future political instability in this country can be removed only if a concerted effort is made by both internal and external political actors to understand the need for a change in Lesotho’s political culture. Given the political climate over the past year or so, this task could be virtually impossible to achieve in the short term, because the run-up to the election has been marked by continued feuding within as well as between the leading parties. Personal exchanges of a virulent and public nature have been the stock-in-trade of leading members of the Lesotho political class since the resumption of democratic competition. This trend shows no signs of abating. Until the cycle is broken, a return to the past undemocratic dispensation that prevailed in Lesotho is not impossible. Such a turn of events will reverse the progress towards good governance and democracy that have been achieved to date.

 

Chris Maroleng, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)