Reforms must succeed at all costs

THE failure by MPs to pass the Omnibus Bill of 2022 last week has thrown Lesotho into a legal limbo with a general election just less than 90 days away.

We are not surprised that SADC, together with the European Union (EU) and other development partners, are furious. They have every reason to feel that way. They see the failure to pass the reforms last week as a monumental failure on their part after they ploughed huge resources into the exercise over the last two years.

thepost understands that SADC is not amused at Lesotho’s failure to pass the reforms last week, with its anger now directed at a few individuals who they believe are out to sabotage the reforms.

On the basis of what happened last Wednesday, it is clear that there are elements within the political establishment in Lesotho who are out to deliberately throw spanners into the reforms. But they must not be allowed to succeed.

If they do, Lesotho which has gone through bouts of political instability over the past five decades, will likely suffer from the same set of challenges that have bedeviled the country. All the efforts that have been thrown into the reform agenda will also come to naught.

That prospect is just too ghastly for us to contemplate. By failing to pass the reforms, Lesotho risks attracting the wrath of SADC which has been extremely patient with us for years. Without SADC’s support, no government can survive in Lesotho.

The proposed amendments to the Constitution were likely to stabilise Lesotho politically while trimming the powers of the Prime Minister. It would also ensure that the army, which has been at the centre of the country’s troubled past, is reformed through the security sector reforms.

Issues that have troubled the judiciary as well as the media would also have been addressed. But instead of dealing with these issues and ensuring that the Bill is passed, our MPs dilly-dallied and fumbled along the way until they ran out of time last Wednesday.

Instead of addressing the matters raised by the people during the reforms process, our MPs appeared keen to tinker with the proposals for their own preservation. They wanted to sneak in certain clauses to secure their own political futures.

And so when the Bill went to the Senate, it was no surprise that the Upper House rejected it outright arguing it was not what the people had said they wanted. Their anger was pretty understandable.

Despite a mad rush to pass the Bill last Wednesday, parliament failed to do so at the last minute. Basotho had hoped that the October elections would be held under a new legal framework that would usher in a period of relative peace and prosperity.

So far, that appears very much unlikely. Our MPs must, therefore with all humility, accept a huge measure of responsibility for the mess. If the matter is not resolved, the MPs who served in the last parliament will be remembered as the generation of politicians who had a golden opportunity to drag Lesotho from squalor and squandered it.

As such they would forever be tainted by that spectacular failure to pass the reforms. The people should therefore never forget nor forgive this bunch of MPs.

These MPs would also be remembered as that generation of selfish politicians who were so fixated with their own political survival rather than the greater good of Basotho. How sad!