Maseru, Sept. 29 — At least 503 cast their votes against 2394 that was expected at Maseru Municipal Council (MMC) 12 Abia Tsoelopele combined school.
Of the four rooms which were earmarked for voting, room A-D, the trio closed doors exactly at 17:00pm while room D closed at 17:10pm to accommodate the last voters who were already on the queue before 17:00pm.
IEC Assistant Returning Officer at the centre, Mr. Motebang Ts’ese mentioned that majority of those who voted were youth.
“Now that we have closed, we are going for inter-mixing as we had previously engaged in advanced voting where all three voters who had applied for it managed to vote,” he said.
However, Mr. Ts’ese noted some of the challenges they faced that include two of their candidates, Basotho National Party (BNP) who withdrew and went to initiation school while the other of United For Change (UFC) disappeared on grounds that he was no longer feeling confident to contest.
“Unfortunately, they did all this without notifying IEC, thus their names still appear on the ballots, this is a matter beyond our control,” he lamented.
Other challenges encountered at MMC 08 Qoaling, Thabong included one independent who had died, thus making candidates’ election to fail. In this manner, IEC will re-announce a new date for candidates’ election. Assistant Returning Officer, Ms. Puseletso Letsosa has revealed.
At the end of today’s business, counting of ballots countrywide has already started and this will lead to the official announcement of the results by IEC at ‘Manthabiseng Convention Centre, Maseru starting tomorrow, Saturday.
