EDITORIAL |  Lubinda’s Misplaced Fury & UPND’s Morning Glory

 EDITORIAL |  Lubinda’s Misplaced Fury & UPND’s Morning Glory

Given Lubinda wants the UPND to “fix the Secretariat or face us.” His warning came after UPND youths stormed the PF offices on Lumumba Road, injured members, and destroyed property under the watch of police officers who claimed they were acting on “intelligence” linked to the Robert Chabinga court order. Lubinda has called the ex parte order “defective,” but PF continues to rush to the same courts it describes as compromised.

One of our intelligent followers noted, half in jest and half in truth, that these cases may be adjourned until July next year. In Zambian politics, that is not far-fetched.

Lubinda’s fury exposes the deeper crisis in PF. The party is pretending the Chabinga factor is a distraction, yet it has power that cannot be ignored. Chabinga and Morgan Ng’ona are the only individuals legally recognised to issue adoption certificates. Last week Chabinga warned MPs that if they do not cooperate with him, they “will cry next year” because they will not be adopted. In a party heading toward a convention, that threat hits the nerves of every aspirant who knows adoption is life or death in politics.

The truth is that Miles Sampa authored this mess long before it matured. Sampa is everywhere today filing court cases, insulting Chabinga but the results are the same. He exploited PF weaknesses, lodged himself in the courts, and walked into the party structures with Chabinga in the wind behind him. Former president Edgar Chagwa Lungu also contributed. He hesitated to hand over power or guide succession after the 2021 loss. He allowed factions, encouraged parallel loyalties, and let unresolved bitterness shape the party’s future.

Today PF is trapped between a legal headaches, a political siege from UPND, and internal ambitions boiling without restraint.

PF’s own history makes this collapse ironic. After winning in 2011, PF dismantled the MMD with surgical precision. They used state institutions, political pressure and legal engineering to weaken the former ruling party. They knew exactly how to destabilise an opponent. That experience should have guided PF to strengthen its own institutions when it lost power in 2021. Instead it allowed infiltration, parallel commands and bought loyalty.

Money is among the core ideologies of PF. And wherever loyalty is transactional, everyone becomes buyable if the price is right. This is PF base situation.

The looming convention though uncertain has become another fault line. Aspirants are campaigning with suspicion rather than vision. Rumours are circulating that some presidential hopefuls are preparing to register their own parties in case they lose at the PF convention. This is not strategy. It is insurance rooted in distrust. It signals that PF has no unifying ideology holding the team together. The UPND does not even need to directly fight this battle. PF is spilling its own water long before reaching the ballot.

In this climate, Lubinda’s threats sound loud but fragile. He has asked the UPND to repair the Secretariat and warned that PF will “take its own steps” if this does not happen. But PF is not fighting one enemy. It is fighting the ruling party, the police, the courts and its own internal fractures. A party that accuses courts of bias but runs to those courts every week is a party that does not know where its real battlefield is.

The UPND continues to exploit the PF crisis with strategic silence and zigzag narratives. They have placed the police around the Secretariat while denying political motivation. They are watching PF split its delegates, dilute its candidates, and weaken its bargaining power ahead of 2026.

PF still has a deep footprint and remains Zambia’s most senior political movement after the MMD, but seniority does not protect a party from self-sabotage.

PF must now decide whether it wants to be a contender or a cautionary tale. If it does not stabilise leadership, resolve the Chabinga question, and discipline its presidential race, the 2026 election will not defeat the party. The party will defeat itself long before voters have a say.

© The People’s Brief | Editorial