The transition and formation of government after Lesotho’s 2022 elections

Abstract

Most assessments and analyses of Lesotho’s elections have focused on the post-election conflict. There has been little attention to the role of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) as the key player with the constitutional mandate to ensure credible, free, and fair electoral processes. During the polls on 7 October 2022, the role of the IEC came to the fore in terms of the extent of their preparedness for and actual performance in managing the electoral processes. Adopting a qualitative approach that relies on interviews with purposefully selected respondents and document analysis, this paper assesses these two main aspects of the IEC. The paper argues that compared to previous elections from 2012, the IEC does not seem to have been adequately prepared to manage the October 2022 elections, and as such, it had a poor performance this time.