Opposition leader seeks coalition after Lesotho election win

MASERU: Main opposition All Basotho Convention (ABC) leader Thomas Thabane has scored an impressive victory in Lesotho’s weekend elections winning 50 of 80 directly contested constituency seats.

Thabane’s arch foe, Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili of the Democratic Congress, won only 26 seats.

Deputy Prime Minister Methotjoa Metsing, of the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD), Mosisili’s main coalition partner in the outgoing coalition, won only one seat, according to the final tally of results in the 80 contested constituencies announced by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) yesterday.

The recently formed Alliance for Democracy of former Police Minister Monyake Moleleki, a splinter party from Mosisili’s DC, won only one seat.

The Movement for Economic Change, also a splinter from Metsing’s LCD won one seat with the Popular Front for Democracy also winning a seat.

However, despite his impressive showing in the constituency seats, Thabane would have to form another coalition to return to power as prime minister which he left in 2015.

The only way he could have avoided a coalition was by winning 61 constituency seats.

Some analysts attribute the perennial crises in Lesotho to a complicated electoral system, which was introduced to ensure inclusivity and broader representation but which now makes it impossible for a good performing party to form a government without a coalition to govern coherently.

The weekend elections were called after Mosisili lost a noconfidence vote in Parliament on March 1, and, instead of handing over power to the opposition, responded by dissolving Parliament and calling for fresh elections.

Lesotho has had a history of coups with the army taking sides with politicians.