The Kingdom of Lesotho will hold its next parliamentary elections on 7 October, the Maseru government has announced.
This comes after King Letsie III dissolved parliament, as its term had expired.
Lesotho has been plagued by serious internal instability for decades and has faced coups and a number of interventions by South African police and troops to restore order.
An electoral and constitutional reform bill, which would have prevented party-switching and placed the armed forces under the control of the king, failed to gain sufficient support among lawmakers. Proponents of these measures said that they were needed to reduce political instability.
[Image: OER Africa, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38863380]