Call for fresh nominations to allow Malanji and Lusambo
By Socialist Party reporter
The Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) was working within the “political wheels of power” when it ruled that Bowman Lusambo and Joseph Malanji could not contest elections in Kabushi and Kwacha, Socialist Party first vice-president and general secretary Cosmas Musheke Musumali has said.
Speaking on HOT FM Zambia’s Hot Seat programme following a ruling by the Constitutional Court that overturned the decisions, Dr Musumali accused the government of political interference in the electoral process.
Lusambo and Malanji are now free to contest the seats.
“ECZ rushed to make a decision and it’s a tricky situation that we find ourselves in. What is the ECZ going to do now? The ConCourt is saying, the situation as it stands, there was no fairness in it. So what is going to be the response of the ECZ?” Dr Musumali asked.
“What is killing the ECZ is the political interference and we suspect, in these hurriedly made decisions, a tragic decision that was made . . . they were working under political interference.”
Dr Musumali said the ECZ decision was obviously rushed and made on flimsy grounds, citing the “grade 12 certificate” argument against Malanji as a case in point.
“The issue (for Malanji’s case) was not the grade 12 certificate, but that is the one that was brought up. And it was brought up in a way that it even caught his lawyers by surprise. If that was the issue, Malanji would have been given time to bring the certificate and show it to the court.”
He accused the UPND government of taking revenge against the ECZ for the way it had been treated in the past.
“The UPND suffered a lot due to some of the decisions made by the ECZ, but you don’t take revenge. You don’t come to power with anger. That anger, because you don’t like the people at the ECZ or as an institution, there was a need to start a dialogue, to start getting the people at the ECZ to work a certain way. Political interference makes professionalism impossible, and that is what we are seeing in the ECZ.
“We shouldn’t throw away the ECZ, because we need it, but what we need is to improve the professionalism. What is killing the ECZ is political interference.”
Dr Musumali said the decisions over Lusambo and Malanji would have been different if the Commission was professional.
“We have always as the Socialist Party raised issues against some of the decisions of the ECZ. The ECZ is an important institution in our democratic process and we want it to function in a professional way. In the past, we have made our reservations known. What was going wrong with the ECZ. But the ECZ has been an institution that we have had a dialogue with, we have supported some of its decisions,” he said.
Dr Musumali said the Socialist Party supported efforts to modernise the ECZ, although he noted that it had been at “half capacity” recently.
“When you talk about the digitisation of voting and electoral voting, we are behind it. The idea of getting people in prisons to go and vote, we supported that. The thinking that even Zambians in the diaspora can actually vote in 2026, we are for that, we are behind it. So there are some new innovations of the ECZ that we support.”
But said due to chief electoral officer Patrick Nshindano leaving and chairperson Esau Chulu’s contract not being renewed, the ECZ was now functioning at half capacity.