EDITORIAL | Opposition Has a Voice, But No Plan
We are entering an election cycle defined more by noise than by structure. The opposition has found its voice, but it has not yet found its argument. The dominant message is clear and repeated with confidence. President Hakainde Hichilema must go. What remains unclear is what comes next, and who is prepared to take responsibility for it.
This is not a defence of the incumbent. It is a statement of the political reality.
Because elections are not decided by dissatisfaction alone. They are decided by alternatives. At present, the opposition is struggling to present one that is coherent, measurable and economically grounded. The result is a vacuum disguised as momentum.
Brian Mundubile’s recent appearance on Diamond TV captured this contradiction. He spoke with confidence, even authority, presenting himself as a man ready to govern. But beneath the tone, the substance remained thin. His proposals, particularly on agriculture and job creation, were ambitious in scale but mathematically unrealistic. Numbers were presented. Systems were not. This gap matters.
Confidence without clarity is not leadership. It is theatre.
One is left with the uneasy impression that parts of the opposition are operating within what psychologists describe as the Dunning-Kruger effect, where conviction rises faster than competence. The louder the certainty, the thinner the detail. In policy terms, that is not reassuring. It is dangerous.
Harry Kalaba, Fred M’membe, Makebi Zulu and others have also remained active in the political space, but activity is not the same as direction. Their messaging is often sharp, sometimes provocative, but rarely anchored in a structured national programme. They are effective critics. They are not yet credible alternatives.
Zambia has seen this before.
History offers a caution. After the death of Michael Sata, the Patriotic Front entered a period of internal contestation where personality overshadowed policy. Power struggles replaced programme clarity. The result was confusion within the party and uncertainty in governance. Today’s opposition risks repeating that pattern, where energy is spent on positioning rather than preparation.
Meanwhile, the incumbent is not standing still.
President Hakainde Hichilema has built a governance narrative around free education, school feeding, expanded tertiary financing, an open-door presidency, energy reform and a significantly expanded Constituency Development Fund (CDF). These are not abstract ideas. They are policies already interacting with citizens on the ground. They can be debated, challenged and improved. But they cannot be ignored.
This is where the opposition is currently failing.
A serious opposition does not simply reject policy. It replaces it. If free education is flawed, what is the alternative funding model? If CDF is inefficient, what is the redesigned allocation framework? If energy policy is inadequate, what is the generation mix and financing structure being proposed? These are the questions that convert criticism into credibility.
So far, answers are scarce.
Instead, the political space is filled with declarations of inevitability. Statements that the President is “already gone.” Assertions that the electorate has decided. These are not strategies. They are assumptions. And elections have a way of punishing assumptions.
The electorate has matured.
Voters are no longer just listening for slogans. They are interrogating numbers, timelines and feasibility. They want to know not only what is wrong, but what will be done differently, how it will be financed, and how quickly it will deliver results. That shift in voter behaviour is the most important development in Zambia’s current political cycle.
It changes the rules of engagement.
Right now, the opposition is running a campaign of rejection. The problem is that rejection, on its own, does not govern. A government is not built on anger. It is built on systems. And systems require detail.
The uncomfortable truth is this.
Zambia may be heading into an election where the loudest argument is that the current President should leave office, but the quietest answer remains who should replace him, and with what plan.
This is not a small gap. It is the election.
Because in the end, power does not transfer to the most dissatisfied voice. It transfers to the most prepared one.
© The People’s Brief | The Editor-in-Chief