The Basotho National Party is a

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

Lesotho Lesotho ( ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a country landlocked as an enclave in South Africa. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the highest mountains in Southern Africa. It has an area of over and has a population ...

, founded in 1959 in colonial

Basutoland Basutoland was a British Crown colony that existed from 1884 to 1966 in present-day Lesotho. Though the Basotho (then known as Basuto) and their territory had been under British control starting in 1868 (and ruled by Cape Colony from 1871), t ...

as the Basutoland National Party by Leabua Jonathan. He was Prime Minister from the 1965 general election until the 1986 coup d'état. In the 1993 general election, the BNP received almost 23% of the vote but did not win any seats in the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the r ...

, with all 65 seats going to the party's rival, the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP). It suffered a similar defeat in the 1998 general election, in which it won 24.5% of the vote but only one seat in the National Assembly. Due to its lack of success in winning constituencies, the party sought the introduction of

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical (e.g. states, regions) and political divis ...

in deciding the allocation of seats; as a compromise, a mixed system providing for 40 compensatory seats that would be decided through proportional representation (in addition to the 80 constituency seats) was introduced.''Political Parties of the World'' (6th edition, 2005), ed. Bogdan Szajkowski, pages 376–377. Justin Lekhanya, the leader of the 1986 coup, was elected as Party Leader of the BNP at its Conference in March 1999."Committee of Privileges Reports to Parliament; Opposition MP Bereng Sekhonyana Murdered"
, Summary of Events in Lesotho - 2nd Quarter 2006, trc.org.ls. In the 25 May 2002

general election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

, the party won 21 compensatory seats through proportional representation with 22.4% of the vote. Since then, the party has been rocked by internal squabbles which have seen it fail to provide an effective opposition within the Lesotho parliament. In the 17 February 2007

, the party won only 3 out of 120 seats. Its headquarters is in Maseru, the capital city.

Electoral Performance

References

Political parties established in 1959 Political parties in Lesotho Basutoland 1959 establishments in Basutoland {{Lesotho-party-stub