Parties meet to discuss election

An international contact group on Lesotho has held high-level meetings with political parties and the government to discuss an election timetable to seal the country’s fragile peace process. Officials from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Commonwealth Secretariat and the United Nations on Monday met with representatives of the Interim Political Authority (IPA), a multiparty body overseeing Lesotho’s transition to fresh elections slated for April. Edward Omotoso, the UN Resident Representative to Lesotho, told IRIN on Tuesday the meeting was held to discuss progress of an agreement signed in December last year between the IPA and the Lesotho government. “The agreement stipulates that all parties have to meet to discuss a timetable for the general elections,” he said. Omotoso said that delegates also discussed the formation of a panel of experts, which was also one of the stipulations of the agreement, to look at all issues related to the elections and to recommend a possible election date. A spokeswoman for the IPA in Maseru told IRIN that the IPA expected the panel to be in place by mid-February. The December agreement follows the political upheaval of 1998 when the opposition accused the government of election rigging and South African and Botswana troops intervened to forestall what they described as an imminent coup. According to the accord, 80 out of the 130 parliamentary seats up for grabs will be awarded under a first-past-the-post system with the remainder based on proportional representation. Future polls will work on a 50-50 mix. SADC members Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique are acting as guarantors for the implementation of the peace process.