The majority of presidential systems in the world are concentrated in the Western Hemisphere. That is why citizens who live in the Americas are not likely to be familiar with parliamentary systems, such as Lesotho’s. Additionally, being aware of what is happening in the politics of other continents can turn out to be difficult due to the lack of access to information and geographical distance as well as other reasons. To illustrate, many people even do not associate “Lesotho” with the little country that is in Africa, and is surrounded by South Africa. Moreover, when it comes to Lesotho’s political issues, one should know that two main events took place in 2014: Prime Minister Thabane accused the military of trying to overthrow him, and then, early elections were scheduled for Saturday, February 28th, 2015 to resolve tensions after the attempted coup (BBC News Africa , 2015).
Having pointed out the political context that Lesotho is undergoing at the beginning of this year, it is especially important to explain this electoral scenario through the three following aspects: a brief description of Lesotho’s electoral system, one of the most significant social issues that Lesotho is experiencing at this time, and the primary contenders who are participating in this election in particular.
Firstly, there are some political science concepts that one should take into account concerning this election analysis. For instance, in order to understand the Lesotho’s electoral system it is important to consider that this African country, as mentioned above, has a parliamentary system, which is a type of democracy in which the government -the head of state- depends on a legislative majority for its survival. Also, when talking about a general election occurring in Lesotho, where there is a considerable possibility of a coalition government, this document is making reference to a national election in which all seats in the legislature are contested. Besides that, it is likely that a government is formed by two or more parties that collectively hold legislative majority. Furthermore, Lesotho has both First-Past-The-Post and Proportional Representation. This is, “eighty seats will be allocated based on constituency votes (one candidate for each constituency) and forty seats will be allocated to reflect the share of the national vote” (BBC News Africa , 2015).
Secondly, the most notorious issue under debate in this specific election is undoubtedly the fears of post-election violence. Throughout history elections have often been followed by violence and instability in Lesotho. In this case, in particular, one can consider that because of the fact that none of the parties is likely to get enough votes to govern alone, violent unrest can show up. That is why another important character, the army, “has promised to keep soldiers in the barracks on polling day to allay fears of violence, but questions remain as to what will happen after the publication of results” (SAPA, 2015).
Finally, the third aspect is the political players and the interest groups involved in the election. On one hand, it is essential to say that even though there are 23 political parties competing for this parliamentary election, only three of those organizations are recognized as possible winners: Mr. Thabane's All Basotho Convention (ABC), Mr. Metsing's Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD), and Mr. Mosisili's Democratic Congress (DC) (BBC News Africa , 2015). On the other hand, there are certain political figures who are playing a crucial role individually. For instance, South Africa's deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa has been in charge of mediating among the political parties following an attempted coup last year. The United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon has been supervising the preview of these elections in Lesotho as well (Oderson, 2015).
To conclude, after having checked briefly what is happening currently in the political arena in Lesotho, it is notable how the existence of a coup d’etat (the use of force to remove a sitting government and replace it with another one outside the parameters of the law) might attract the participation of other political players, not only in the national level, as in the case of armies, but also in the international community, as in the case of the United Nations. Even more important, these interesting events (coups d'etat) might trigger other political processes, such as early elections, in order for a certain country to recover its political stability.
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