Africa-Press – Lesotho. FORMER Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili last week warned against the passing a new electoral model that would severely limit the number of women MPs in parliament.
Mosisili, who is credited with creating opportunities for women and ensuring that they hold decision-making positions in government, was speaking during debate in parliament last week.
The amendment, which has already been passed in the National Assembly, is now set for debate in the Senate next week. It introduces the concept of “best loser” who will automatically be given a Proportional Representation seat.
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), in allocating PR seats, will count the votes of best losers in each party and in each constituency to determine who qualifies for a seat.
This means no one will be selected for a PR seat if they had not stood for election in their constituency and become the best loser in comparison with others in their party countrywide.
So, even if politicians see that all best losers are men and women are at the foot of the pyramid, the law requires that those with better votes be taken to parliament under the proportional representation.
“I swear by the living God that if this law passes in this form we will have a parliament with fewer women after elections this year,” Mosisili warned.
Under Mosisili’s leadership from 1998 to 2017 Lesotho boasted of the first woman commissioner of police, woman governor of the Central Bank, woman Speaker of the National Assembly and over 30 percent women representation in parliament.
Mosisili’s legacy of empowering women could be severely curtailed if the law gets the nod in Senate. He warned that it would spell bad news for women if they were to be denied the chance to be in parliament because they would not have had a chance to stand in the constituencies.
Mosisili has been hailed for adopting, through electoral laws, electoral gender quota systems for local and national legislative structures. Under his administration Lesotho introduced a 30 percent gender quota requirement for election to local councils at the local level.
At the national level, Lesotho introduced a zebra list, which is a condition that when political parties submit lists for the purposes of 40 PR seats the names must alternate between those of men and women.
This legal arrangement, under the amendment to the Electoral Act, will be no more. Mosisili argued that women fail to garner enough votes at primary elections where parties select those who will stand for national general polls at constituency level.
“It is a problem across all parties, even in my own party,” Mosisili said.
“They hardly reach 20 countrywide,” he said.
’Mamoipone Senauoane, the Thaba-Tseka MP who is also a former police minister, said it is good that no one will be given a chance to go to parliament despite that they have not been voted.
“It’s high time women vote for each other, especially because we outnumber you men in our parties,” Senauoane said.
She said the tendency to create opportunities for women to go to parliament even if they have not stood for election must come to an end. “We are even insulted because of that,” she said.
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