Lesotho Police Seals Parliament Over No-Confidence Vote

Sixty-four members of Lesotho’s parliament sought to introduce a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. But before they could, an RFP member of parliament filed an injunction with the Constitutional Court to stop the motion until the completion of a national reform process. Key among the reforms is that a sitting prime minister can only be removed by a two-thirds majority vote in parliament instead of the current simple majority. In a surprising move, the country’s security forces sealed off parliament to prevent the no confidence vote from taking place. Professor Sipho Seepe, a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Support at the University of Zululand, tells VOA’s James Butty, the security forces are undermining the freedom of Basotho to express themselves through their parliament.