Africa-Press – Lesotho. Lesotho’s King Letsie III’s office has referred to the attorney-general a request from civic society activists who want officials from the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to step down on grounds of incompetency.
The activists, Resetselemang Jane, Kananelo Boloetse, and Motsamai Mokotjo wrote to the king’s acting senior private secretary, Nyolosi Mphale, asking him to urgently advise the king to appoint a tribunal to investigate the IEC commissioners’ fitness to hold office.
This was because the IEC acknowledged in October last year that it had declared results for four proportional representation (PR) seats that had been wrongly calculated.
The three argued that the IEC’s reputation was in bad standing considering that the European Union Election Observation Mission noted the anomaly. Since then, nothing has been done to correct the incident, setting a bad precedent on public accountability, they argued.
“Months later, no one has been held accountable for that embarrassing mistake and this lack of accountability is undermining the legitimacy of the rule of law.
“What we seek to emphasise is that the biggest casualties of announcing incorrectly calculated results for four PR seats are the taxpayers who are robbed of thousands of maloti every month,” they said.
A National Assembly member earns about R39 529 per month and also enjoys an allowance of R3 000 for housing, up to R5 000 for fuel, R2 000 for utilities, and then a R1 000 expenses allowance.
In total, they earn R50 529, tax-free a month. The three activists say about R2.4 million per year would be paid to legislators who should not be in parliament.
“The taxpayers are forking out over M200 000 (R200 000) each month to pay the salaries and benefits of four people who were not supposed to be in the National Assembly in the first place,” they said.
“It is against this background that we humbly request that the council of state should represent to His Majesty King III that the question of removing the three [IEC] commissioners has to be investigated,” they added. Mphale acknowledged receiving the request, and said it had been forwarded to the attorney-general for consideration.
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