Nthatuoa Koeshe
PRIME Minister Moeketsi Majoro has congratulated the United States’ Joseph Biden for beating the incumbent President Donald Trump in the 3 November 2020 presidential elections.
Mr Biden, who served as vice president under the Barack Obama administration (2009 to 2017), is set to become the 46th US president in January next year after taking an unassailable 290 electoral college votes to Mr Trump’s 232. This is comfortably way past the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the election.
Although Mr Trump has been digging in and refusing to concede defeat saying the polls were rigged, some world leaders have started sending congratulatory messages to Mr Biden.
Dr Majoro has not been left behind.
“On behalf of the government and people of the Kingdom of Lesotho and indeed on my own behalf, I wish to express my sincere and heartfelt congratulations on your appointment as the new President-elect of the United States of America,” Dr Majoro wrote in his congratulatory letter to Mr Biden on 9 November 2020.
Lesotho and the US have long-standing ties and the former is a recipient of US development initiatives including the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
AGOA allows Lesotho to export its textile products duty-free to the US market while the multi-million-dollar MCC first compact has enabled the country to improve its health infrastructure as well as water and sanitation.
In his letter to Mr Biden, Dr Majoro alluded to the cordial relations between the two countries which enabled the US to channel development aid to Lesotho.
“It is my fervent hope that during your tenure of office the fraternal relations already existing between our two countries will grow from strength to strength, for the mutual benefit of the peoples.
“Please accept, Your Excellency, my best wishes for your personal good health and well-being, as well as for the happiness, peace and prosperity of the people of the United States of America,” Dr Majoro wrote.