The National Independent 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 ...

in Lesotho. The NIP was founded by Anthony Manyeli as a split from the

Basotho National Party The Basotho National Party is a political party in Lesotho, founded in 1959 in colonial Basutoland 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 ...

."Unexpected Election Outcome as Doves Mistaken for Eagles"
, Summary of Events in Lesotho - 2nd Quarter 2002, trc.org.ls. It performed poorly in the 1993 and 1998 parliamentary elections,''Political Parties of the World'' (6th edition, 2005), ed. Bogdan Szajkowski, page 591. but in the

election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...

for 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 rep ...

held on 25 May 2002, the party won 5.5% of popular votes and five out of 120 seats. The party had previously never won any seats, and its success in winning five seats through proportional representation in the 2002 election was attributed to voter confusion about party symbols: its symbol being that of the dove and the symbol of the ruling

Lesotho Congress for Democracy The Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) is a political party in Lesotho. In 1997, Prime Minister Ntsu Mokhehle left the Basutoland Congress Party to form with his faction the new Lesotho Congress for Democracy. The new party won the 1998 ele ...

(LCD) being that of the eagle. NIP party leader Manyeli, expressing surprise at the results, said that this explanation was the only way he could account for them. In the 17 February 2007

parliamentary 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 seats through proportional representation. It is allied with the LCD."Win was not fair - opposition"
AFP (''IOL''), February 21, 2007. Manyeli contested this alliance and won a court ruling against the alliance, but it was then overturned on appeal. He was excluded from the party's list of candidates and therefore did not get a seat in parliament. Opposition parties trying to have the alliance ruled invalid have said that the appeal ruling was in violation of the constitution; they sought for the NIP members of parliament to be replaced by Manyeli and his supporters."Opposition ploy will not work - Lesotho PM"
Reuters (''IOL''), April 3, 2007.

Election Results

References

{{Lesotho-party-stub Political parties in Lesotho Republican parties