Lesotho’s Independent Electoral Commission has said it is likely to announce the final results of its parliamentary election on Tuesday, 11 October, 2022.
According to reports, businessman, Sam Matekane is set to become Lesotho’s new prime minister after heading for a landslide victory in the country’s parliamentary elections.
His brand-new Revolution for Prosperity (RFP) party is defying predictions that no single party would win a clear majority and that Lesotho would be saddled with yet another unstable coalition.
With 49 of 80 constituencies counted from Friday’s election, the seven-month-old RFP had won 41 and looked to be on course to win a simple majority in the 120-seat Parliament.
In Lesotho’s complex electoral system, 80 seats are allocated in first-past-the-post constituency elections, and a further 40 proportional representation seats are allocated according to how many votes parties win nationally.
These 40 seats are only calculated after the 80 constituency seats have been allocated.
They can upset early expectations, yet the RFP appears to have such a clear lead so far that it will very likely get at least the 61 seats needed to govern on its own.
At the 49 constituency mark, the RFP was routing the traditional parties, with the second-placed Democratic Congress managing to win only six seats and the Alliance of Democrats and Movement for Economic Change just one each.
In 2020, ABC leader Thomas Thabane stepped down as prime minister after being charged with the murder of his ex-wife.
He denied any wrongdoing, and the charges were later dropped.
His successor, Moeketsi Majoro, declared a state of emergency in August after politicians failed to pass constitutional reforms to amend everything from the role of political parties and rules on floor-crossing in parliament to the appointment of senior officials and the prime minister’s role.
The reforms were supposed to make Lesotho less prone to political logjams but got stuck in one themselves.
Last month, Lesotho’s highest court ruled the state of emergency unconstitutional.
The All Basotho Convention (ABC), had selected another leader, former health minister Nkaku Kabi, to contest its ticket.
The ABC, which heads the current governing coalition, had won none.
The All Basotho Convention (ABC) has run the country of 2.14 million people since 2017, but divisions within the party have seen two prime ministers installed over five years.
Its failure symbolised the total disenchantment of the Basotho with the squabbling and self-serving politicians who have destabilised the country for years.
Defections, meanwhile, have left the party vulnerable to its opposition rivals, the Democratic Congress (DC) and the new Revolution for Prosperity (RFP), which is led by businessman Sam Matekane.
“The RFP is winning. The ABC has totally collapsed with not even a single constituency seat,” said Basildon Peta, publisher of the Lesotho Times, the country’s main newspaper.
“Predictions of a close contest were wrong. People want change.”
Peta forecast that the RFP was likely to surpass the 61-seat threshold to form a government on its own.
Lephoto Thamae, the leader of the Basotho Poverty Solutions Party, dismissed the elections as unfair.
“Because, for example, in the constituency of Qacha’s Nek, it happened that those people who had to vote for my party from Maseru here, they boarded into Quantums and then into the voting stations.
“When they arrived there they found that the sign of my party was not available on the ballots. They then voted for their second-option party.”
He indicated his party would be approaching the court on this issue.
The RFP’s Moorosi also complained that many RFP voters had not been on the voters’ roll even though they had registered.
By the time the party resolved most of these problems on Friday afternoon, many voters had already left.
