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Lesotho - Political Parties

Lesotho gained independence from Great Britain in 1966. The electoral system promulgated in the 1966 and 1993 constitutions was a first-past-the-post (FPTP), single member district (SMD) system inherited from the departing colonial power. As a result of this system, the share of votes obtained by opposition parties was never reflected in a proportional share of seats in the parliament. In the 1993 and 1998 elections, for example, while securing up to one-quarter of all votes, opposition parties failed to win more than one parliamentary seat. As a consequence, losing parties rejected the outcome of every general election held in the country, including in 1998.

The Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) turned to the courts in an attempt to overturn the results of the pre-independence election of 1965. And the then ruling Basotho National Party (BNP) suspended the constitution and declined to surrender power when it lost the 1970 election. Led by Chief Leabua Jonathan, the BNP maintained control of the state by exploiting divisions within the opposition BCP and, where necessary, with force. Having fled the country, opposition leaders established the Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA) to contest the BNP’s control. But the BNP government was ousted in a military coup in 1986 that was engineered by the apartheid government in neighboring South Africa.

Under military leadership from 1986 to 1993, the country returned to multi-party in 1993 with the election of a government led by the Basotho Congress Party (BCP). Unable to resist internal and external pressures for democratization unleashed by the political transition in South Africa, however, the military government allowed BCP leaders, notably Ntsu Mokhehle, to return from exile and to participate in open elections in 1993. These led to a dramatic win for the BCP, which took all 65 seats in the National Assembly.

The FPTP system continued to produce extremely unbalanced election results. In the 1993 election, the BCP took all the seats in parliament with just 74.7 percent of the total votes. Opposition parties dismissed the BCP’s victory in the election as rigged, and backed King Letsie III when, in 1994, he led a short-lived palace coup that lacked broad popular support.

The BCP split in 1997 and the majority of the members of Parliament followed the prime minister into a new party, the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD).

New political unrest came in the wake of the 1998 parliamentary elections, when the LCD won all but one of the seats contested, with just 60.5 percent of the total vote. Despite now winning a combined total of almost 40 percent of valid votes, the opposition parties were again left essentially without representation in the parliament. The results seemed unbelievable to opposition leaders. Because ailing Prime Minister Mokhehle had lost control of the BCP machinery, manifest in an LCD breakaway right before the election, the opposition had anticipated a close outcome in which no party would gain a parliamentary majority. Instead, the LCD became the ruling party with virtually unchallenged control of Parliament.

Although the elections in 1998 were certified as “free and fair”, opposition parties, led by the Basotho National Party (BNP), refused to accept the results and mobilised their supporters to oppose them. The political unrest that ensued led to looting and burning of businesses and public property in Maseru. Opposition supporters burned down the central business district of the capital city Maseru. It was quelled by Southern African Development Community (SADC) troops from South Africa and Botswana.

Experience in the 1990s revealed that the electoral model was itself inappropriate. Lesotho had been using the first-past-the-post electoral model (FPTP), which did not translate the national vote into a proportionate share of seats in the National Assembly. Consequently, an Interim Political Authority (IPA), set up by political leaders following the 1998 post-electoral conflict, recommended the adoption of a new mixed-member-proportional (MMP) electoral system that combines FPTP and Proportional Representation (PR) in order to ensure that the national vote approximates the proportion of seats that each party receives in the National Assembly.

In addition to the 80 existing constituency seats to be elected by FPTP, 40 proportional representation (PR) seats would be allocated among all parties that win votes. Proportional representation is achieved by dividing total national list election votes by 120 to determine a quota per seat. The overall PR formula is Hare quota, with no formal threshold, which maximizes proportionality.

Lesotho holds its legislative election every five years. The elections held 25 May 2002, which were won by Lesotho Congress for Democracy, were based on the new and fairer electoral model. Some 1,085 candidates from 18 parties, as well as 32 independent candidates, were registered to contest the 80 FPTP constituencies. Sixteen parties presented full lists for a total of 770 candidates for election via proportional representation. Once again, the LCD made a virtually clean sweep of the constituencies, taking 77 out of the 78 seats contested on election day, this time with 57.7 percent of the vote. It also took a very similar proportion of the PR vote (54.9 percent).

Importantly, for the first time in Lesotho’s electoral history, the losing opposition parties accepted the results. The new MMP system allowed the combined opposition to capture all 40 PR seats in the parliament. The opposition won a presence in the legislature in 2002 with roughly the same combined share of the votes that it had attained in 1998. The elections were well received internationally and signalled a strong push for democracy that provides a sound basis for political stability. This notwithstanding, strengthening the democratic institutions and culture remains a challenge to the country.

By 2012 the country had 11 opposition parties and over the past decade, it had three consecutive democratic elections, with the Lesotho Congress for Democracy Party maintaining power during the whole period. The plurality of political parties and intense political contestation and constant splits of political parties undermined stability resulting in elections-related protests during the last election in 2007. Interventions by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and other Civil Society Groups helped to resolve the situation. Following the landmark 2012 National Assembly Elections in Lesotho, the need to form a tripartite coalition government offered an unprecedented transition opportunity to secure lasting political stability in Lesotho. Clear procedural and legal frameworks to form the coalition government were needed. There were 30 political parties registered with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) for teh 2017 election. Twenty seven of them contested for the elections, but more than 50 percent of those parties did not qualify even for a single seat in parliament. Not only that, but the majority of them have also failed to secure the 500 threshold they used to register with the IEC. The country has been populated by a lot of bogus parties.