’Marafaele Mohloboli
THE Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has de-registered four parties which no longer met its requirements for various reasons including the failure to hold annual conferences.
The parties that have been struck off the IEC register are Senkatana, Basotho-Batho, Basotho Thabeng ea Sinai and White Horse Party.
The latest developments were confirmed by IEC Operations officer, Kotsoane Motsie, in a recent interview with the Sunday Express.
“We have no choice but to strike these parties off the register as they are not fully cooperative as per the requirements of a fully-fledged political party,” Mr Motsie said, adding that eight more parties also face the chop for similar shortcomings.
He said some of the parties did not have offices, others did not participate in the 3 June 2017 snap elections and others did not hold their annual conferences as required.
The other eight that could fall by the wayside include Lekhotla la Mekhoa le Meetlo (LMM), Basutoland African National Congress (BANC), All Democratic Corporation (ADC), African Unity Movement (AUM), Progressive Democrats (PD).
“This is not the whole list as some parties are surely to be deregistered after our investigations into their operations.
“We wrote letters to those parties to ‘show cause’ why they may not be deregistered by the IEC but some of them did not even bother respond,” Mr Motsie said.
Lesotho had 32 registered political parties before the de-registration of the four.
The number of parties in the country is seemingly too high for a country which has a small population of only 2, 1 million people.
Countries like the United States of America that have more than 320 million people have only two parties.
For a party to be registered with the IEC, it must have 500 members registered with the IEC, an operational bank account and an office.
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