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The Kingdom of Lesotho follows democratic norms of governance. The Lesotho elections are held to elect the members of parliament. The 2007 elections in Lesotho were won by the Lesotho Congress for Democracy or LCD.
Lesotho follows a bicameral system of parliament. The Lesotho Parliament consists of 2 chambers - the Senate and the National Assembly. The Senate has 33 seats. The Senate seats are chaired by hereditary Principal Chiefs and the King's nominees. The Lesotho elections perform the function of nominating members to the National Assembly. The National Assembly consists of 120 seats. Successful members of the National Assembly have a tenure of 5 years.
The elections in Lesotho employ the direct popular method of voting system. A mixed member proportional system is in place for 80 single member constituencies. The remaining 40 seats are filled up by the party-list proportional representative system. The Lesotho Congress for Democracy is presently the dominant political party in the National Assembly of Lesotho with a total of 61 seats.
The 2007 elections of Lesotho was held prematurely on February 17, 2007. The elections were originally scheduled to be held in the later part of the year. This change was due to mass defections of Parliamentary members of the ruling LCD party to the newly formed Tom Thabane led All Basotho Convention. The early elections were believed to stem further defections of Parliamentary members from LCD to ABC. The Lesotho Congress for Democracy won the elections by a thin majority of 61 seats. A coalition government is presently in control of Lesotho.
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