The April 30 Local Government elections saw the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) candidates being under very heavy pressure from a plethora of independents and in some community councils in the Mokhotlong district, the Basotho National Party (BNP), having a distinct showing.

In preliminary elections results announced over Radio Lesotho over two days beginning May 1^st, the LCD showed itself the dominating political force in most electoral divisions. In a majority of the divisions, the fight was mainly between the LCD and Independents.  

The other political parties, such as the Lesotho Workers Party (LWP); Marematlou Freedom Party (MFP); Popular Front for Democracy (PFD) managed to get some representation on community councils by sporadic wins in one or other electoral divisions. 

According to the different presiding officers on the actual polling day, there had been very few problems including cases where either people’s names did not appear on the Voters’ Roll or situations where voters did not have identification cards although their names appeared on the Roll. 

These kinds of problems were solved by allowing the concerned people to vote using “tendered” ballot papers. 

There were also many instances in which LCD candidates stood unopposed which, according to the Local Government Act 1997, allowed to accede into positions on community councils. 

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) announced during the initial publication of results that there also a few “failed” elections, in which a candidate in one or more electoral divisions died before the actual election day. A new date was to be set in such cases, the IEC said. 

An official and more comprehensive election result is still to be published by the IEC.

02 May 2005