The outcome of Lesotho's 2012 general elections was historic for three main reasons. Firstly, the country moved from a single party majority government under the Lesotho Congress Party (LCD), led by former Prime Minister Mosisili since 1997, to a coalition government. Mosisili, who led the newly created LCD splinter party, the Democratic Congress (DC), to a significant win of 48 parliamentary seats (218,366 votes out of a total of 551,726) fell short of winning an outright parliamentary majority, leading to his defeat. This was a direct result of the country's mixed member proportional (MMP) electoral model, introduced in 2002 to limit post-electoral contestations and make parliament more inclusive.
Unlike the country's previous first-past-the-post model, MMP is premised on proportionality by allocating compensatory seats to weak performers and often to smaller parties. The legal precept of the model is that electoral victory no longer goes to the party with the largest number of votes but to the party that secures more than 50 percent of the seats in the National Assembly. The second reason for the significance of these elections is that the coalition, which unseated and relegated the ruling DC to opposition status, was itself produced by opposition parties in the minority. In retrospect, the incumbent DC was not pro-active enough in its efforts to form alliances. On the eve of the announcement of poll results by the Lesotho Independent Electoral Commission on Tuesday May 29, it was clear that no party had amassed the requisite 61 out of 120 seats in the National Assembly to form a government. The All Basotho Convention (ABC), led by the newly inaugurated Prime Minister Thabane, opened negotiations for the establishment of a coalition on the same day, and by the following day the ABC had sealed a coalition deal with the LCD under Mothejoa Metsing, now serving as deputy Prime Minister, the Basotho National Party (BNP), the Popular Front for Democracy (PFD) and the Marematlou Freedom Party.
