Elections to be held in March

Lesotho’s Prime Minister, Pakalitha Mosisili, said on Sunday that elections would be held in March next year. Speaking at a public rally in the Maluti Mountains at the weekend, he said that his government had accepted a timetable proposed by a team of international election experts who recently visited Lesotho. Lesotho last held elections in 1998. The governing Lesotho Congress of Democrats (LCD) won all but one of the 80 parliamentary seats. The opposition argued that the polls were rigged, leading to a month-long demonstration outside the parliamentary and royal buildings. The country’s prime minister, Mosisili, asked South Africa, in its capacity as Southern African Development Community (SADC) chair, to intervene after junior army members forced officers to resign. South Africa and later Botswana sent troops into the tiny mountain kingdom to quell the mutiny.