Lesotho’s feuding ruling parties look set to miss today’s deadline to remove barriers which have stalled progress in their efforts to find a lasting solution to their differences.
The three parties, namely the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD), All Basotho Convention (ABC) and Basotho National Party (BNP), signed an agreement before Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba last week, undertaking to have made certain concessions by today, paving the way for the normalisation of their relationship.
According to the agreement, which has been dubbed the Windhoek Declaration, the LCD should have terminated the agreement it signed with the main opposition Democratic Congress (DC) on 11 June this year, while ABC leader, Prime Minister Thomas Thabane, had taken steps to end the nine-month suspension of parliament he imposed two months ago.
However, only the LCD appears likely to beat the deadline, while only a miracle would see the ABC fulfilling its end of the bargain by the set timeline, based on pronouncements made by the leadership of the two parties elsewhere in this issue.
Yet it is not just the failure to meet their self-imposed deadlines that is disconcerting but also the casual manner the three parties are taking the whole issue, despite its potential to plunge this country into turmoil.
The message the parties’ leadership has repeatedly passed in successive interviews is that none of these agreements is binding, despite their being overseen or endorsed by mediators, some of whom would have travelled long distances from their countries.
Yet the fact that the Windhoek Declaration, which came following a meeting between the three coalition leaders — Dr Thabane of the ABC, Mothetjoa Metsing of the LCD and Joang Molapo of the BNP — and President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, has not been fulfilled, hardly comes as a surprise to those who have closely followed the drama.
Despite Dr Pohamba being the chairperson of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, none of the three ruling parties appears to have taken his intervention in trying to help them end their differences, which nearly saw the coalition government collapsing two months ago, seriously.
For instance, since returning from Namibia, the three parties have never bothered to officially update Basotho on what they agreed upon in Windhoek and what steps they would take to ensure the normalisation of their relationship, which started with such promise in June 2012.
The ruling parties have also not been in a hurry to implement recommendations made a Commonwealth envoy, Dr Rajen Prasad, which are also meant to normalise relations between the three parties.
The recommendations are also meant to ensure a stable government in Lesotho, but Dr Prasad’s report has remained unimplemented more than a month after the New Zealander handed it over to the three partners.
This lack of urgency and apparent lack of care for the wellbeing of the nation by the three parties in government should come to an end as the impasse can only negatively impact on the country’s economic and social wellbeing.
Only the very naïve cannot see that the uncertainty between the governing party leaders has pegged back Lesotho’s development and held back many development projects as donors have increasingly become jittery at the continued impasse.
The coalition leaders must show that they are true representatives of the people and that they are not in government to serve their own selfish interests but the nation, by fulfilling promises they would have made at each and every forum.
