Parliamentary elections in Lesotho 2002

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The parliamentary elections in Lesotho in 2002 took place on May 25, 2002 in the Kingdom of Lesotho . The National Assembly was elected, which elects the Prime Minister and thus the government. For the first time, the distribution of mandates was determined according to a combined majority and proportional representation .

Starting position

The distribution of seats after the last elections in 1998 was as follows: Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) 79, Basotho National Party (BNP) 1. Since 1998, the politician Bethuel Pakalitha Mosisili has held the office of Prime Minister. He belonged to the LCD, which he had founded as a spin-off from the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP). After the 1998 elections there was a constitutional crisis that was initiated by the defeated opposition parties and in the course of which public order came to a standstill. Only with the deployment of South African and Botswana troops could the democratically elected government be reinstated. As a result, the Interim Political Authority was formed as a provisional parliament , which passed a new electoral law. In addition to 80 direct candidates, 40 list candidates were elected for the first time in 2002, who belonged to parties that were disproportionately represented according to direct mandates - calculated on the number of 120 MPs.

In October 2001, the Lesotho People's Congress (LPC) split from the LCD with 27 MPs.

831,315 eligible voters were registered before the elections. Most parties had their chairmen in the top positions, but the prominent LPC politician Shakhane Mokhehle, brother of the late former Prime Minister Ntsu Mokhehle , firmly counted on a direct mandate and was not a candidate for the list.

procedure

Candidates in the 80 constituencies and politicians on electoral lists for the remaining 40 seats were available for election. The election took place on May 25, 2002 (Saturday). The elections were observed by representatives of the SADC .

Result

The LCD won the election with 54.8% of the vote. The constituency MPs came from two parties: 77 from the LCD and Kelebone Maope from the LPC. In the two vacant constituencies, two additional LCD MPs were elected in by -elections. The BNP received the second highest number of votes with 22.4%. The following mandates were awarded via party lists: BNP 21, National Independent Party (NIP) 5, LPC 5, Basutoland African Congress (BAC) 3, BCP 3, Lesotho Workers' Party (LWP), Popular Front for Democracy (PFD), Marematlou Freedom Party (MFP) and National Progressive Party (NPP) each 1. Mokhehle missed the direct mandate by nine votes.

Thus the LCD provided 79 of the 120 mandates. For the first time ten women - all from the LCD - won direct mandates, and two women were chosen as list candidates.

554,386 people (66.7% of those eligible to vote) took part in the election. The elections were recognized nationally and internationally as free and fair.

consequences

Mosisili was able to remain Prime Minister after this election. In 2006, a year before the next election, the All Basotho Convention (ABC) split off from the LCD under Tom Thabane .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Results on the EISA website (English), accessed on February 12, 2016
  2. ↑ a b Scott Rosenberg, Richard W. Weis fields Michelle Frisbie-Fulton: Historical Dictionary of Lesotho. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / Oxford 2004, ISBN 978-0-8108-4871-9 , p. 98.
  3. ^ SADC report on the 2002 elections (PDF), accessed on December 4, 2013
  4. ^ Scott Rosenberg, Richard W. Weisfelder, Michelle Frisbie-Fulton: Historical Dictionary of Lesotho. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / Oxford 2004, ISBN 978-0-8108-4871-9 , p. 99.