Maseru — A political settlement has been made by the Arbitration Tribunal last week, to address a situation whereby the Interim Political Authority (IPA) could not reach a consensus on the ratio of the allocation of the 130 parliament seats for election 2000 in Lesotho.

The tribunal which was headed by Court of Appeal Judge, Jullian Browde, assisted by two local political analysts from the National University of Lesotho, Nqosa Mahao and Dr. Francis Makoa, started hearing arguments on Wednesday last week.

It made a ruling that for next year, 80 seats should be allocated on the first-past-the-post model, while the remaining 50 seats will be allocated proportionally.

"This tribunal, well aware of certain factors (including but not confined to the time constraints involved in holding the election by May 2000) which have been argued before us by counsel on both sides and which impinge upon the model to be applicable in the 2000 election, has decided to make a two-pronged award in the following terms," read the judgement.

The award (judgement) continues that for election 2000 only a mix ratio of 80/50 will be applied, adding that in the election to follow after the 2000 fresh polls the mix ratio will be on a 50 percent basis.

The Interim Political Authority (IPA) in Lesotho could not reach a consensus on this issue, with 15 members including the ruling LCD party voting for 80/50 allocation while nine members wanted a 65/65 ratio. The matter was then referred for arbitration when a consensus could not be reached.

Lesotho political parties have made a decision to go for a Mixed Member Parliament (MMP) system starting with the election 2000, which comes after a series of conflicts from previous elections which were held on the first-past- the-post model.

Even the tribunal held in its award that: "This tribunal is of the unanimous view that the "First past the Post" model hitherto applied in the Kingdom has been a source of great dissatisfaction and has been a major cause of unrest after elections," said Judge J. Browde and his assistants. They added in the statement that in their view, the country needs to embrace the proportional Representation model as soon as is practicably possible and to move in that direction forthwith.

The award of the arbitration which many political analysts have seen it as a compromise, giving each of the opposing parties to put to test their stand views in the successive polling years, will now facilitate IPA to start making final preparations towards the 2000 elections.