The Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) 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 ...

. In 1997, Prime Minister

Ntsu Mokhehle Ntsu Mokhehle (26 December 1918 – 6 January 1999) was a Lesotho politician. He founded Basutoland African Congress (BAC) in 1952. He founded Basutoland Congress Party in 1957 then later in 1997 founded Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD). He ...

left the

Basutoland Congress Party The Basutoland Congress Party is a pan-Africanist and left-wing political party in Lesotho. The Basutoland African Congress (BAC) was founded in 1952 by Ntsu Mokhehle and Potlako Leballo. The party was renamed the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) ...

to form with his faction the new Lesotho Congress for Democracy. The new party won the 1998 elections with 60.7% of the popular vote and 79 out of 80 seats. Pakalitha Mosisili became the new party leader and prime minister. At the

elections 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 r ...

, 25 May 2002, the party won 54.9% of popular votes and 77 out of 120 seats. 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 62 out of 120 seats. Major splits from the party occurred in October 2001, when leading LCD members

Kelebone Maope Kelebone Albert Maope (born 1945) is a politician from Lesotho. He served in the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) and Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) governments during the 1990s before splitting from the LCD in 2001 to form his own party, the ...

and Shakhane Mokhehle left the party to form the

Lesotho People's Congress The Lesotho People's Congress is a political party in Lesotho. It was formed as a split from the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) by that party's Lesiba faction after Deputy Prime Minister Kelebone Maope resigned from the government in ...

and in October 2006, when

Tom Thabane Thomas Motsoahae Thabane (born 28 May 1939) is a Mosotho politician who was the fifth prime minister of Lesotho from 2012 to 2015 and from 2017 to 2020. He founded the All Basotho Convention (ABC) in 2006 and led the party until 2022. Thabane s ...

left the party to form the

All Basotho Convention The All Basotho Convention (ABC; ) is a political party in Lesotho. The party was formed in October 2006 and founded by Tom Thabane, a former minister in the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) led by the government of Prime Minister Pakalitha M ...

. Prior to the

Lesotho general election, 2012 General elections were held in Lesotho on 26 May 2012. The incumbent Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili's newly formed Democratic Congress won a majority of single-member seats. He also won his seat by the second-largest margin of victory. Howeve ...

the party split again with incumbent Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili forming the

Democratic Congress The Democratic Congress is a political party in Lesotho that split from the Lesotho Congress for Democracy. It is led by Mathibeli Mokhothu. History Before the 2012 election, the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy split, with Prime Minist ...

and General Secretary

Mothetjoa Metsing Mothetjoa Metsing (born 2 February 1967) is a former Deputy Prime Minister of Lesotho. He is a member and current leader of the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD). He served in the government of Prime Minister Tom Thabane between 2012 and 2015 ...

taking over the party leadership.

Electoral Performance

References

External links

Lesotho Congress for Democracy
1997 establishments in Lesotho Pan-Africanism in Lesotho Pan-Africanist political parties in Africa Political parties established in 1997 Political parties in Lesotho Social democratic parties in Africa Socialism in Lesotho {{Lesotho-party-stub