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afrol News, 28 May - As in the troubled 1998 elections, Saturday's free and fair poll has already produced a clear winner. The ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) is heading for a landslide victory and has secured a comfortable parliamentary majority already before all the votes are counted. This is however exactly what raises concern. The Lesotho Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has announced preliminary results more or less as they have been counted and today it became clear that the LCD already has secured 68 constituency seats. This will be giving the ruling party a majority in the 120-member National Assembly. The main opposition party, the Basotho National Party (BNP), however has protested the preliminary results and is threatening to boycott parliament. Before the elections, the general expectations were of a close run between LCD and the opposition parties. Now, the results are fearsomely close to those causing unrest in 1998. In fact, the LCD's lead is even clearer. While LCD got approximately 60 percent of the 1998 poll and BNP got 40 percent, the main opposition party this year is losing out. The IEC's preliminary results show that BNP only is receiving 22 percent of this year's vote while LCD is getting 55 percent. The rest of the votes are split between 17 other opposition parties. After the 1998 elections, where the LCD also won a landslide victory, opposition protest caused popular unrest and months of instability. Calm was only restored by a military intervention by South Africa and Botswana. Several measures have been taken to avoid the 1998 unrest. Firstly, the electoral code was changed to allow a parliamentary representation more close to the actual votes given. After 80 of the seats are elected directly from the constituencies, 40 seats are reserved to percentage repartition according to national election results. The LCD's victory however seems too big to allow for many opposition seats in the upcoming Parliament. Further, in the run-up to this year's poll, Lesotho's regional partners had arranged a conference to unite the country's political and religious leaders in a call for post-election calm. A key outcome of last week's conference was agreement by all parties to respect the outcome of the elections, to convene immediately after election results are announced and to form a new government through inter-party dialogue and political negotiations. The elections have been monitored by 150 international observers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Commonwealth and the European Union, under the overall coordination of the UN. According to a statement from the observer mission, the polls had been "free, fair, peaceful, lawful and transparent." There had only been "some administrative and logistic problems in some cases," but these had been corrected. Also the Electoral Commission has proven sensitive to the complaints by the opposition, stating it had begun an audit of the poll results. "Political parties will be invited to participate in and have access to the information from this audit," the Commission's chairman, Leshele Thoahlane, said in a statement. The BNP opposition is however at unease with the situation, fearing the re-establishment of one-party rule in Parliament. BNP leader Major-General Justin Lekhanya told Reuters that "If the LCD goes to parliament unopposed, we will not participate in that Parliament." Again, it seems, the LCD victory has been too massive. Reconciliation attempts are however underway and the Basotho show little interest in repeating the 1998 setback. Voters again seem to have flocked around the government party, widely ignoring the 18 other political parties contesting in Saturday's poll. Turnout was over 70 percent.
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