CAN THE PATRIOTIC FRONT CHANGE ITS CHARACTER?
It has become necessary to address what seems to be on-going failure by the Patriotic Front (PF) to take significant steps to resolve two major issues.
The first one that of creating conditions, aside from their court drama, for choosing a substantive President of the party. After losing power in 2021, the PF failed to face reality and choose a new leader, engaging in the kind of indecision that is legendary.
The leadership that had failed to deal with internal lawlessness and violence against citizens, causing Zambians to reject the party at the polls, simply refused to give way to a new team. They fashioned a claim that they would do so after a postmortem. Then they clutched onto a recommendation that the party should rebrand. But as many, including Kantanshi MP Anthony Mumba, asked, how can you rebrand the party with the same failed leaders at the top.
The PF leaders’ intransigence over this matter led to the frustration of many young members who wanted to take up leadership and rescue the party. It was this same frustration that drove Miles Sampa into the eager arms of the ruling United Party for National Development (UPND), and the rest is history.
Now faced with an even more urgent need to choose a President and start actual mobilisation towards the 2026 elections, the PF is exhibiting the same, if not worse, form of procrastination.
Nearly a month after Secretary General Raphael Nakachinda announced the start of choosing lower level party executive committees, there is very little sign of grassroots activity in this regard. Instead, the PF Central Committee appears to be more keen to send a delegation to “brief” the family of late Sixth President Edgar Lungu, who was also PF President.
This makes as much political sense as a management of a company that has lost its CEO taking off to “brief” the family of the deceased before advertising the job for his replacement. Why not send a delegation to start countrywide tours to brief grassroots members on preparations for the coming convention and crucial elections?
Meanwhile, one candidate for the PF presidency, Brian Mundubile, is under attack for “wanting to disadvantage others”, in a process being run by SG Nakachinda and Acting President Given Lubinda. How is that even possible? Is this not just classic PF?
Given Lubinda himself seems ready to contest for the position. The PF internal crises have presented Lubinda, as Acting President, with an opportunity to show what exceptional leadership capabilities he possesses. Thus far, he has not distinguished himself. If the silence that has ensued after Nakachinda’s call for party executive committees is anything to go by, people may have reason to ask whether there is a realistic chance of a PF national conference actually taking place in November, 2025.
Here is the second major issue – the incessant claim by the PF of being the “Anchor Party” of the Tonse Alliance. With all the evidence of its own troubles with the leadership election process, the anchor may not hold for too long, and this ship could rock sooner than later.
Granted the PF has the most number of opposition members of parliament. There is also a very strong suspicion that its grassroots membership countrywide still exists, and is envied by both the UPND and other parties. But those PF grassroots members are fast resembling sheep without a shepherd. They need a new PF President fast, to re-mobilise them into a real anchor party for the alliance, and for its own chances of reclaiming the seats they currently hold.
But why this interest in PF affairs? The short answer is patriotism.
Zambia’s democracy is under threat from the Big Bully political tactics employed by President Hakainde Hichilema and the United Party For National Development (UPND) in the last four years. The country’s democratic system is chocking because Hichilema has sucked out its oxygen through lawfare, undermining state institutions, passing draconian cyber laws, arresting opposition leaders and other critics, and preventing the opposition from holding public rallies in the last four years.
In the fight to rescue Zambia’s democracy, the PF is in a very valuable space. But perpetuating its leadership confusion through indecision may soon scuttle the strategic value of the position the party holds.
Like Mordecai told Esther in the Bible, she had been raised to become Queen for the deliverance of her people the Jews, and then warned her:
“But if you altogether hold your peace at this time, then shall enlargement and deliverance come to the Jews from another place…”.
On both the issues raised above, the PF needs to shape up, so that this party does not become a distraction in the efforts by millions of Zambians to rescue the country from UPND misrule.
In short, the PF should not become an impediment as millions of Zambians prepare to correct what has gone wrong in the last four years.
John 8:32 “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
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