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| This article is part of a series on the politics and government of Lesotho |
Monarchy |
Government |
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General elections were held in Lesotho on 28 February 2015 for all 120 seats of the National Assembly, the lower house of the Parliament of Lesotho, more than two years ahead of schedule due to the 2014 political crisis. [1] Following mediation facilitated by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), [2] King Letsie III on the advice of the incumbent Prime Minister Tom Thabane, dissolved the Eighth Parliament and called a snap election. [3]
Lesotho, officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is an enclaved country–the only one in the world outside of the Italian peninsula–within the border of South Africa. It is just over 30,000 km2 (11,583 sq mi) in size and has a population of around 2 million. Its capital and largest city is Maseru.
The National Assembly is the lower chamber of Lesotho's bicameral Parliament.
The Parliament of Lesotho consists of two chambers:
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Lesotho uses the mixed-member proportional representation voting system. More than 1.2 million voters had been registered by the Independent Electoral Commission. [4] The army was confined to the barracks on the election day. [5] The opposition Democratic Congress managed to form a coalition government as no party achieved an outright majority. [6] Voter turnout was 48%.
Mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation is a mixed electoral system in which voters get two votes: one to decide the representative for their single-seat constituency, and one for a political party. Seats in the legislature are filled firstly by the successful constituency candidates, and secondly, by party candidates based on the percentage of nationwide or region-wide votes that each party received. The constituency representatives are elected using first-past-the-post voting (FPTP) or another plurality/majoritarian system. The nationwide or region-wide party representatives are, in most jurisdictions, drawn from published party lists, similar to party-list proportional representation. To gain a nationwide representative, parties may be required to achieve a minimum number of constituency candidates, a minimum percentage of the nationwide party vote, or both.
The Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) is the military of Kingdom of Lesotho, which consists of about 3,000 personnel and is tasked with maintaining internal security, territorial integrity, and defending the constitution of Lesotho. Since the mountainous kingdom is completely landlocked by South Africa, in practice the country's external defence is guaranteed by its larger neighbour, so the armed forces are mainly used for internal security. The LDF is an army with a small air wing.
A coalition government is a cabinet of a parliamentary government in which multiple political parties cooperate, reducing the dominance of any one party within that "coalition". The usual reason for this arrangement is that no party on its own can achieve a majority in the parliament. A coalition government might also be created in a time of national difficulty or crisis to give a government the high degree of perceived political legitimacy or collective identity it desires while also playing a role in diminishing internal political strife. In such times, parties have formed all-party coalitions. If a coalition collapses, a confidence vote is held or a motion of no confidence is taken.
