These newsletters will be followed, in the very near future, by news updates from other countries in the region. The trouble started steadily when the opposition declined to acknowledge defeat in the May 23 general elections claiming there has been some rigging. The ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy LCD , formed in August last year as a break away party in parliament from the then ruling Basutoland Congress Party BCP , had won with a landslide all but one of the 80 contested parliament seats, with the highest margin of to the next contestant.
An alliance of three main opposition parties; the BNP, the BCP and the Marematlou Freedom Party MFP , which were later joined by five small other opposition parties, filed lawsuits in the courts against the election results but lost all the cases as the courts said there was no proof of fraud.
After failing to convince the courts of law, the opposition alliance took the appeal to the people. A series of protest demonstrations were mounted with some calls for national stay away. While the stay away calls partly succeeded, the most powerful blowto the government of Lesotho came on August 4 as thousands of protesters demonstrated even to the violation of the police time limit of six hours in the permission.
At the end of the time limit, the protesters, who went to petition King Letsie III to dissolve parliament and its government and form an interim government of national unity as well as calling for fresh elections, decided they will not leave the palace gates until the king had spoken and declared that he had dissolved the government.
Since then, they mounted continuous night vigils outside the Royal Palace at the gates. Several attempts by the police and the army to disperse them, even by using live ammunition, failed. In the long protest, five protesters died and 35 seriously injured while three police officers died. In this protracted struggle which seemed eternal, meanwhile instabilising the whole country, the South African Development Community SADC intervened by establishing a commission of inquiry into the fraud and irregularities alleged by the opposition parties during general elections.
