Youth vote bolsters the opposition

A new opposition party mounted a stiff challenge in national elections, promising to end hunger and poverty in this tiny mountain kingdom in southern Africa, one of the world’s poorest and most AIDS-ravaged countries.

Former government minister Tom Thabane, who left the ruling party in October to form the rival All Basotho Convention party, had polled strongly among the country’s disaffected young people in the weeks leading up to the election.

Turnout among Lesotho’s youth was high, as people traveled for miles on foot or horseback along remote rocky paths and waited in searing heat to cast their votes at 2,500 polling stations.

Election monitors said after the polls closed that they had no reports of intimidation or harassment and there had only been minor logistical glitches.