Lesotho’s election on May 25 represented a significant success for a region that has recently been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Even the allegations of vote rigging by Justin Lekhanya, former military strongman and leader of the opposition Basotho National Party (BNP) — which has been defeated in three consecutive elections — cannot obscure the triumph of democracy in a country whose history since independence from Britain in 1966 has been marred by dictatorship.
The conduct of the poll — which was pronounced free and fair by international and regional monitors — was a tribute to the hard work of the Lesotho Independent Electoral Commission and various donors over the past two years.
Every polling station visited on a 250km drive showed the result of polling officials’ rigorous training. Enormous care was taken to check voters’ identities; the two voting slips (one for candidates, one for the party lists) were kept carefully separate; voters were instructed twice about the voting procedure and their fingers marked with indelible ink. Party agents were always present.
The process was often painfully slow, but was one that undoubtedly earned the rubric of being ”free and fair”. Counting was conducted at polling stations, where the local result was published, before being forwarded to constituency centres. Again, the final results were published locally before being transmitted to the election results centre in Maseru.
The major problem — apart from the inevitable logistical ones of transporting ballot papers and other election materials to isolated polling stations in far flung mountain villages — was the sheer exhaustion of the polling staff. But uncounted votes were guarded by police and party agents until counting could start again the next morning.
On Tuesday morning the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy’s (LCD) majority (61 seats) was confirmed, even though by that time the extent of its victory was evident. By then Lekhanya was already crying foul, calling for an independent audit of the results and threatening to boycott Parliament.
Eighty seats in the 120-seat Parliament will come from candidates elected in each district. Results must also be tabulated for 40 new seats elected by party. There were 19 parties involved in the election.
The inclusion of the new seats in Parliament is part of an overhauled electoral system intended to move the kingdom beyond its legacy of political unrest and one-party rule.
The revamped electoral system is similar to those in place in Germany and New Zealand.
The LCD swept the 1998 election, sparking riots and violence led by the opposition. The government called in troops from neighbouring South Africa and Botswana to quell an army mutiny and strikes. Seventy-five people were killed and hundreds of businesses were pillaged.
This time the LCD will be able to resume office untainted by any doubts about its legitimacy. The major challenge it now faces is to ensure that it does not fall victim to the internal fracturings that have plagued it in the past and could erode its capacity to govern.
But for the moment, at least, it can bask in the comfort of an election victory that was well fought and fairly won.
Additional reporting by AP