Former military junta threatens protest over election results

Maj-Gen Justine Metsing Lekhanya, formerly chairman of the military council that ruled the country for five years, now leader of the Basotho National Party (BNP), is threatening to protest his party's failure to win a single constituency seat in the recent general election.

The Lesotho army officer led a successful coup in 1986 and then headed the ruling military council until he was ousted in 1991. In 1998 he disputed the outcome of democratic polls, precipitating widescale unrest that resulted in neighbouring South Africa deploying a military force to restore order.

Lekhanya, who has retired from the military, is blaming his party's dismal performance on election rigging and is planning a protest march through the streets of the capital, Maseru, on Friday, followed by a party rally on Sunday. According to political analysts the BNP's leader still harbours the ambition of holding the highest political office in the land, but the election has severely dented his aspirations. Prior to the poll the BNP held 21 parliamentary seats.

Lekhanya, who led the 1986 coup to depose Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan - who himself had declared a state of emergency in 1970 after the BNP was on course to losing the first election since the country achieved independence from Britain in 1966 - accused the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of cooking the books to ensure the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) was returned to power. "The LCD wants to cling on to power and IEC is making sure that that happens. They claim to have employed independent auditors to verify the polling results, but they are still not independent," the former military leader claimed.

Not all bad news

Lekhanya was tried and found guilty, but later pardoned for his part in 1998 military mutiny, and assumed leadership of the BNP in 1999. Nevertheless, he will take his seat in parliament, owing to the country's novel electoral laws. Of the 120 seats up for grabs, 80 are acquired in the 'first past the post system', with the remaining 40 seats handed out on a proportional representation system, according to party lists.

In terms of the first past the post system, the ruling LCD won 61 seats, the All Basotho Congress won 17 seats, and the Alliance of Congress Parties (ACP) won 1 seat. One constituency did not return a member because the ACP candidate died in the run-up to the poll, and a by-election will be held.

A mixed electoral system was first introduced in 2002 after the damaging experience of previous elections, where only the first past the post system was used. Parties romped into power with a huge majority of seats, while garnering just over 50 percent of the popular vote. The mixed election system was designed to ensure greater representation of parties, in the hope of inculcating a more inclusive system that would lead to more consensual, nation-building politics.

In the recent ballot 14 political parties contested, some of which would have been consigned to the political wilderness if only the first past the post system was used, but have been able to enter parliament under the proportional representation system.

The IEC awarded the National Independent Party 21 seats, the Lesotho Workers Party - an alliance partner of the ABC, the main opposition party - was awarded 10 seats, Lekhanya's BNP got 3 seats, the ACP received 2 seats, while the Basotho Democratic National Party, the Basotholand Congress Party, the Basotho Batho Democratic Party and the Popular Front for Democracy were each awarded one seat.

'Will of the people'

Election observers, in the main, gave the election a clean bill of health. Claims of electoral impropriety have not been echoed by them, despite the country holding its first ever snap elections as a consequence of 18 members of the LCD crossing the floor to the opposition ABC in late 2006.

Denis Kadima, deputy head of the observer mission sent to Lesotho by the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA), said the challenges of holding the first snap election highlighted the country's unpreparedness for it. "We observed that voters' lists had not been continuously updated. This was then exacerbated by the elections calendar, which required massive registration and data entry, which the computer system was unable to accommodate ... We therefore recommend that in future the IEC's electoral lists should be continuously updated to avoid overload at election time."

Although the country had only a 90-day window period in which to hold the snap election, Kadima, whose EISA observer mission was led by the former president of Botswana, Sir Ketumile Masire, deemed that the "elections have managed to reflect the will of Basotho people, and we are seeing democracy slowly entrenching itself in Lesotho and becoming the rule of the game."

In a joint statement by the churches, concern was expressed that some of the ruling LCD's ministers had used their government vehicles to ferry voters to polling stations, and people with disputes were urged to resort to the legal mechanism available.

The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) parliamentary forum's observer mission, the Lesotho Council of NGOs and the Catholic and Evangelical churches all declared the election 'free and fair', and appealed to all to accept the outcome of the poll.

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