Parliamentary elections in Lesotho 2012

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The parliamentary elections in Lesotho 2012 took place on May 26, 2012 in the Kingdom of Lesotho . The National Assembly was elected, which elects the Prime Minister and thus the government.

Starting position

Bethuel Pakalitha Mosisili has been Prime Minister since 1998 . He belonged to the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD), which he himself had founded as a spin-off from the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP). In February 2012, shortly before the regular parliamentary elections, he and numerous LCD MPs moved to the newly founded Democratic Congress (DC). Thus three promising parties stood for election: in addition to the LCD (under the former Minister Mothetjoa Metsing ) and the DC under Mosisili, the All Basotho Convention under Tom Thabane , also a split from the LCD. A total of 15 parties competed, including the former governing parties BCP and Basotho National Party (BNP) as well as the left-wing Popular Front for Democracy (PFD), the Marematlou Freedom Party (MFP) , which is close to the royal family, and the National Independent Party (NIP ), which is close to the LCD ), which had become the second strongest party in the last election.

In addition to 80 direct candidates, 40 list candidates have been elected since a change in the electoral law in 1998. They belong to parties that are disproportionately represented according to direct mandates - calculated on the number of 120 MPs. The distribution of seats after the 2007 elections was as follows: LCD 62, ABC / Lesotho Workers' Party (LWP) 27, NIP 21, BNP 3, other parties: 7 seats.

Unlike in 2007, each voter had only one vote that he could only give to a party or an independent that had put up a candidate in his constituency or was running there.

1,127,980 eligible voters were registered before the elections.

Conflicts were feared beforehand. The retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu , who actually no longer speaks publicly on political issues, asked the people of Lesotho for a peaceful process.

procedure

Candidates in the 80 constituencies and politicians on electoral lists for the remaining 40 seats were available for election. The even positions on all lists were reserved for women. The election took place on May 26, 2012 (Saturday) from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time. The counting of the constituencies took place until Tuesday, the allocation of the list places on late Tuesday.

The elections were monitored by commissions from SADC , AU , Commonwealth and EISA , including former heads of state Bakili Muluzi ( Malawi ), Rupiah Banda ( Zambia ) and Yakubu Gowon ( Nigeria ). The process was described as peaceful in a joint statement by the commissions.

Result

The constituency MPs come from four parties: 41 from the DC, 26 from the ABC, 12 from the LDC and one MP from the PFD. Mosilisi achieved the second highest victory of all direct candidates in his constituency in the district of Qacha's Nek . The strongholds of the ABC are the districts of Maseru and Berea , the LCD won most of the constituencies in the Leribe district . All mandates in the south and east went to the DC. The following MPs were elected via party lists: DC 7, ABC 4, LCD 14, BNP 5, PFD and NIP 2 each, Basotho Batho Democratic Party (BBDP), BCP, Basotho Democratic National Party (BDNP), Lesotho People's Congress (LPC), LWP and MFP each 1.

This means that the DC has 48 MPs, the ABC 30, the LCD 26, the BNP 5, the PFD 3, the NIP 2 and six other parties each with one MP.

564,451 people (50.04% of the eligible voters) took part in the election.

consequences

Prime Minister Mosisili resigned on May 30, 2012. On June 8, 2012, Tom Thabane took his oath of office as the new Prime Minister. From then on he led a coalition of ABC, LCD and BNP, which was supported by the PFD, MFP and other small parties. This was the first time in the history of Lesotho that there was a peaceful change of power due to parliamentary elections.

In June 2014, with the approval of the King, Thabane dissolved Letsie III. the National Assembly to avoid a vote of no confidence by the LCD. In August, the army tried to overthrow Thabane and the police in favor of the LCD and the DC, but the coup failed. Only through the mediation of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was it possible to temporarily end the crisis. The next parliamentary elections due in 2017 were brought forward to February 2015.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bishop Tutu urges peace in the Christian Science Monitor of January 21, 2012 (English), accessed on May 30, 2012
  2. ↑ Lists of the parties for the 2012 election ( Memento from September 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF, English; 187 kB)
  3. ^ Report of the SADC mission of May 27, 2012 ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF, English; 107 kB)
  4. ↑ Report of the EISA for election (PDF)
  5. ↑ Diagram on voter turnout 2012 ( Memento from October 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 17 kB)
  6. ↑ Lesotho Prime Minister Resigns in Sunday Times, May 30, 2012, accessed May 30, 2012
  7. ↑ News from Reuters , accessed on June 9, 2012