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Article: Close to heaven: Lesotho. (ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy enjoys landslide victory because of improving political and economic conditions)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- May 30, 1998
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Lesotho
MASERU
A MOUNTAINOUS statelet surrounded by South Africa, Lesotho is an unlikely success story. Its capital, Maseru, is so tiny that a visitor can orientate himself around a single hat-shaped curio shop; most of its 2.2m people, the Basotho, are blanket-clad peasants. It has known much more dictatorship and military rule than democracy since it became independent from Britain in 1966. Now, at a parliamentary election on May 23rd, the ruling party, the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD), has won 78 of the 80 seats. Sounds fishy. But it probably wasn't. Although the opposition cried fraud, international monitors say that the election was fair. The ...