Maseru — The Executive Secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Tomas Salomao, told reporters in Maseru on Saturday that the SADC defence and security troika will make another effort to reconcile the positions of the contending political parties in Lesotho.

A summit of the troika is scheduled to take place in Maseru on Sunday and Monday, under the chairmanship of Mozambican President Armando Guebuza.

A slow-burning political crisis has been under way in Lesotho ever since the parliamentary elections of February 2007.

"Life in Lesotho goes on, but there is no doubt that it would be much better if the political climate were one of better understanding", said Salomao. "The current scenario opens space for opportunists to take advantage, which could lead to more complicated situations, such as attempted coups d'etat".

The summit is intended to relaunch dialogue in Lesotho between the ruling and opposition parties. The opposition never fully accepted the 2007 election results, and matters took a turn for the worse in April 2009 when Lesotho Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili survived an attempted coup.

Salomao admitted that the positions of the rival parties appeared to have hardened since the days of the initial mediation, undertaken by the former President of Botswana, Quett Masire, who eventually dropped the thankless task.

Currently, it is the Christian Council of Lesotho that is facilitating the dialogue, and it is likely that the Council will coordinate with the SADC Troika in attempts to find a lasting solution.

The elections held on 17 February 2007 were controversial, first because they were held earlier than necessary. The elections could have been held in April or May, but when the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) suffered a damaging split in October 2006, Mosisili persuaded the constitutional monarch, King Letsie III, to dissolve parliament, paving the way for early elections.

Mosisili's problem was that the breakaway All Basotho Convention (ABC) took 17 of the LCD's parliamentarians - leaving the LCD with smallest possible parliamentary majority, just 61 of the 120 seats.

The opposition complained that the election had been sprung on them at short notice, but what really precipitated the current crisis was the attempt by both main parties to play the Lesotho electoral system to their own advantage.

Lesotho uses a mixed system. 80 of the seats are allocated in single member constituencies, where the winner takes all, under the undemocratic first-past-the-post system inherited from British colonialism. But the other 40 seats are elected by proportional representation on a party list system - which is supposed to provide "compensatory seats" to correct the imbalances of first-past-the-post.

The system was subverted by both the LCD and the ABC who only stood for the 80 constituency seats. They struck deals with minor parties - the National Independent Party (NIP) for the LCD and the Lesotho Workers Party (LWP) for the ABC - under which they would deliver the vote for the small parties in the seats allocated by Proportional Representation, in exchange for some places on the lists being given to members of the larger parties.

Naturally, neither the LCD or the ABC won any of the PR seats, while the vote for the NIP and the LWP soared when compared with previous polls.

The LCD took 62 of the constituency seats, and the NIP 17 of the PR seats, giving the LCD/NIP alliance an easy majority of 79 of the 120 seats. The manoeuvre backfired for the ABC which won 17 of the constituency seats while the LWP won only ten of the PR seats.

This led to claims that the PR seats were being distributed incorrectly: in fact, it is a matter of simple mathematics, and there is no doubt that the allocation is substantially correct. The opposition then called for the LCD and NIP to be treated as one party, and the ABC and LWP as another. This would rewrite the rules of the game after it has been played, and was a transparent manoeuvre to deprive the LCD/NIP alliance of about 20 seats.

There have been complaints that the electoral system is "too complicated" - and even Tomas Salomao seemed to go along with this, suggesting that Lesotho should find a simpler electoral model, even if that required changing he electoral legislation or the Constitution.

"Crises of this sort should not happen again", said Salomao. "The law should not create spaces for doubtful interpretations".