Lesotho After May 2012 General Elections: Making the coalition work
On Friday 8 June, Thomas Thabane succeeded Pakalitha Mosisili as the Prime Minister of Lesotho, not by winning elections but by building a coalition government with the support of the opposition.
Dimpho Motsamai,
Researcher,
Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis Division, ISS Pretoria Office
On Friday 8 June, Thomas Thabane
succeeded Pakalitha Mosisili as the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Lesotho,
not by winning elections but by building a coalition government with the support
of the opposition. The outcome of
Lesotho’s 2012 general elections was historic for three main reasons.
Firstly, the country moved from a
single party majority government under the Lesotho Congress Party (LCD), led by
former Prime Minister Mosisili since 1997, to a coalition government. Mosisili,
who led the newly created LCD splinter party, the Democratic Congress (DC), to
a significant win of 48 parliamentary seats (218 366 votes out of a total of
551 726) fell short of winning an outright parliamentary majority, leading to
his defeat. This was a direct result of the country’s mixed member proportional
(MMP) electoral model, introduced in 2002 to limit post-electoral contestations
and make parliament more inclusive. Unlike the country’s previous first-past-the-post
model, MMP is premised on proportionality by allocating compensatory seats to
weak performers and often to smaller parties. The legal precept of the model is
that electoral victory no longer goes
to the party with the largest number of votes but to the party that secures
more than 50 per cent of the seats in the National Assembly.
The second reason for the
significance of these elections is that the coalition, which unseated and
relegated the ruling DC to opposition status, was itself produced by opposition
parties in the minority. In retrospect,
the incumbent DC was not pro-active enough in its efforts to form alliances. On
the eve of the announcement of poll results by the Lesotho Independent
Electoral Commission on Tuesday 29 May, it was clear that no party had amassed
the requisite 61 out of 120 seats in the National Assembly to form a
government. The All Basotho Convention (ABC), led by the newly inaugurated
Prime Minister Thabane, opened negotiations for the establishment of a coalition
on the same day, and by the following day the ABC had sealed a coalition deal
with the LCD under Mothejoa Metsing, now serving as deputy Prime Minister, the
Basotho National Party (BNP), the Popular Front for Democracy (PFD) and the
Marematlou Freedom Party.
The third point to highlight is
that the parliamentary opposition numbers are now far more significant than
during the previous parliament, which was characterised by a fragmented and
weakened opposition.
The first 100 days in office for an administration are crucial for
setting the tone for its future policy and leadership orientation. An advantage
for the ABC-led coalition is that in addition to commonalities in policy
ideology and well-known policies, its partners have extensive parliamentary
experience. Thabane, for instance, served as minister under three
administrations from 1990 and during the LCD’s tenure under Mosisili, before
defecting to the ABC in 2006. It is for this reason that initial public addresses by the PM are
anticipated to go beyond rhetoric, be reflective of past and current issues of conflict and consensus within the
parliamentary arena, and provide a vision for addressing a widely acknowledged
weak parliament.
Research
points to three factors that condition voter evaluation of party policy and projected
performance. The first is the initial position claimed by the party as
reflected in election manifestos, speeches, and its declarations; the second is
the party’s past record; and the third, the anticipated future performance. Questions about the longevity of the coalition will remain rooted in
this analytical lens, given the country’s history of splinter party formations
driven by personality clashes; and the fact that all the parties in the
coalition are breakaways. (Marematlou Freedom Party and the LCD are breakaways
from the Basotholand Congress Party (BCP), ABC is an LCD breakaway, while the
PFD is a breakaway from the Basotho National Party (BNP).)
However, some are convinced of the coalition’s ‘unity of purpose’
mantra, and see it as an important shift from an authoritarian corrupt past to a
democratic present. There is also a strong conviction that the majority
partners in the coalition (ABC with 30 seats and the LCD with 26) are unlikely
to join the DC given the recent acrimonious history with the Mosisili-led party
and their own rationalistic calculations in forgoing their ruling status.
The view from the middle is cautiously optimistic. It appreciates the
endemic culture of floor crossing that has historically served as a means to
political office while remaining open to a possible shift in party culture and
accountability. In reality both office seeking and policy pursuit motivations
are likely to be at play in coalition negotiations. But
beyond this
is what kind of government Lesotho gets and whether the coalition endures -
ultimately reflecting genuine power alternation in Lesotho politics as
envisaged by its leadership.
The foregoing has profound implications for the country’s first
opposition-led coalition government, especially given that the past parliament
was mostly in decline. The imperative to clearly understand and articulate the
coalition’s responsibilities in parliament to the electorate, including the
requirements for making the legislature work in a way that was not possible
before, cannot be overemphasised. Assuming the ABC-led coalition holds its
majority, factors determining the coalition’s failure
or success in the first 100 days of office can be categorized along three
policy phases. In the first phase, which is the transition phase, key factors
are how the coalition is led, how it defines its role and function in government,
and the details of transitioning from the Mosisili government to the new
administration. The most obvious payoffs of office under
scrutiny will be cabinet portfolios, (notably the big three - Finance, Foreign
Affairs and Trade) and how they are constituted. Equally under scrutiny will be
the
organisation
of the bureaucracy and signs of political interference and partisan
appointments of the judiciary and public administrators.
The second phase -
mobilization - is about more broadly validating the status and legitimacy of
the coalition with the electorate by better defining how it serves the public
good. Also requiring elaboration during
this phase are programmes promised during the elections by the coalition
parties, considering that they vary in emphasis in their party manifestos.
The
last phase deals with agenda setting, policy formulation, and programming in
the longer term. Here, rhetoric is replaced by a clear demonstration of how
policy responsiveness of governing structures is maximised. The hypothesis for
now is that the extent of change in the new government in the short to longer
term and what realistically can be achieved has a real bearing on public
support to the coalition as a whole and individual parties. It also has an
impact on the evaluations of the ousted DC opposition party, which still enjoys
mass support in Lesotho.
