Yearbook 2009
Lesotho. According to countryaah, Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili was subjected to an attempted murder in April when a group of men opened fire on his home early one morning. Mosisili escaped unharmed, but four of the attackers were shot dead in a firefight with the prime minister’s security force. The motive for the murder attempt was not clarified, but Lesotho has for several years been troubled by strong domestic political contradictions.
In July, the opposition parties demanded a judicial review of the disputed parliamentary elections in 2007, when, according to the opposition, the electoral commission had given the government side 21 seats on the wrong ground. The government rejected all thoughts of resuming the scrutiny of the election results and Botswana’s former President Ketumile Masire, who for two years tried to mediate the conflict at the government’s invitation, left his assignment citing the government’s lack of cooperation. In a short final report he indicated that he supported the opposition’s view that the distribution of seats was not correct.
In August, a newspaper revealed that a Taiwanese-owned company that makes jeans for major US brands dumped chemical waste on municipal dumps and into a river. The American jeans companies pledged to investigate the scandal, saying that the local company had been ordered to improve their routines quickly.