After Botching the Vote, They Want Another Term? Spare Us the Insult

By Hlalele ‘Neko

There comes a moment in the life of every public official when they must choose between personal ambition and public dignity. For Lesotho’s current Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) commissioners, that moment came in 2023 and they failed spectacularly. Yet, in Lesotho accountability is more performance than principle, we now face the grotesque absurdity of these same commissioners seeking reappointment. It is a national embarrassment.

Let me be blunt: no self-respecting professional who presided over the botched allocation of Proportional Representation (PR) seats in a general election would even dare to entertain the idea of reappointment. In countries with a shred of democratic integrity, they would have resigned the moment the Constitutional Court ruled that they had failed to properly execute their constitutional mandate.

But in Lesotho, the culture of consequence has decayed into farce. These commissioners…who oversaw one of the most egregious electoral blunders in recent memory, now have the audacity to imagine they deserve a second chance. On what grounds? Familiarity with failure?

The 2023 PR allocation debacle was not a clerical error. It was a fundamental failure of electoral management, one that not only distorted the will of the people but also undermined the legitimacy of the entire democratic process. It triggered costly litigation, delayed parliamentary functionality, and embarrassed the country regionally. Worse still, it eroded public trust in one of the most sacred institutions in a democracy: the electoral commission.

In any serious democracy, such a failure would be career-ending. Not in Lesotho. Here, officials cling to power like it is a birthright, immune to shame and unbothered by failure.

Let me put this into perspective: the IEC is not a village development committee. It is a constitutional body tasked with administering free, fair, and credible elections. Its integrity must be beyond question. That integrity was shattered when the commission failed to get the most basic arithmetic of democracy right and instead of stepping aside, the commissioners now want a reward. Please!

This is not merely about incompetence. It is about arrogance. A refusal to accept that with great responsibility comes the possibility…no, the certainty…of accountability. Seeking reappointment after such a monumental failure is a direct insult to us… Basotho. It communicates that even the most catastrophic errors carry no consequence in our public institutions.

Where is the remorse? Where is the professional conscience? Where is the simple, human decency to say, “We failed. We are sorry. We will make way for others”?

The answer is nowhere. Because Lesotho has normalized impunity at every level of governance. We see it in this current cabinet, which self deals, unpunished corruption at LEC, Public Works & Transport and now, in an electoral body that mismanaged an election and wants to keep their jobs as if nothing happened.

This moment calls for a reset. Not just of personnel, but of standards. We must stop rewarding mediocrity. We must insist that public office be a platform for service, not a sanctuary from shame. The IEC commissioners had their chance. They failed. And by failing to resign, they forfeited the public’s trust.

We deserve better. Democracy demands better. And dignity…that vanishing virtue in our public life requires that these commissioners do the honourable thing and walk away.

We do not need recycled failure. We need a new generation of electoral leadership; competent, accountable, and above all, humble enough to know when their time is up. That time came in 2023.

Let them go.