How to rig elections the legal way: understanding the politics behind the 70 new constituencies- Sishuwa Sishuwa

How to rig elections the legal way: understanding the politics behind the 70 new constituencies

By Sishuwa Sishuwa

On 16 April 2026, the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) published a list of 70 new constituencies. These will be added to the existing 156, creating a total of 226 constituency-based seats in the National Assembly.

As I predicted on 30 November last year in an article entitled “The devil in delimitation: why Hichilema is desperate to create new constituencies”, the majority of these new constituencies have been allocated to sparsely populated areas that support the ruling United Party for National Development (UPND) rather than densely populated, opposition-leaning urban centres like Lusaka and the Copperbelt.

Of the 70 new constituencies, thirty-one (31) are in the Zambezi region – comprising parts of Central Province (😎 and the three provinces sharing the Zambezi River: Southern (9), Western (7), and Northwestern (7). These areas have historically supported the UPND.

Another twenty-six (26) are in the Luangwa-Chambeshi region – the four provinces sharing the Luangwa and Chambeshi rivers: Eastern (9), Luapula (5), Muchinga (6), and Northern (6). These areas have historically backed the main opposition party, the Patriotic Front (PF).

The remaining thirteen (13) new constituencies are distributed as follows: six in Lusaka and seven on the Copperbelt.

Notably, four of Lusaka’s six new constituencies were carved from existing ones with strong historical support for the UPND, driven mainly by their ethnic demographics. These include Makeni (sliced from Kanyama), Kafue East (from Kafue), Chilanga West (from Chilanga), and Chongwe West (from Chongwe). The other two new constituencies, Lima and Roma, were cut from Matero and Mandevu constituencies, respectively.

Taken together, there are four major political implications of the new constituencies.

The first is that when added to existing constituencies, the Zambezi region now has the highest number of constituencies in the country by geographical spread or location totaling 97, distributed as follows: Southern (29), Western (26), Northwestern (19) and Central (23). The Luangwa-Chambeshi region has 82 constituencies, distributed as follows: Eastern (29), Luapula (20), Muchinga (14), and Northern (19). Lusaka (18) and Copperbelt (29) have 47 constituencies between them.

This means that even before the first vote is cast, the UPND strongholds already have an in-built majority of 97 arguably guaranteed seats (since they are in safe zones), thanks to this redrawing of electoral districts or gerrymandering. When one adds the 31 seats that the Constitution empowers the winning presidential candidate to appoint to parliament through nominations (11) and proportional representation (at least 20 of the 40 seats), this number, if President Hakainde Hichilema wins re-election, rises to 128 seats – more than half of the seats in the National Assembly.

(Note: propositional representation seats are allocated to parties based on the vote that a party’s presidential candidate has received. Since Zambia’s constitution requires a winning presidential candidate to receive more than fifty percent of the total valid votes cast, 20 is only the minimum number; the final number will be determined by the percentage received by the president-elect, but it cannot be less than 50 percent).

The second implication is that since the main opposition party is formally run by a leadership that was installed by President Hichilema, even most of the 82 seats in PF strongholds are likely to be won by the UPND in the forthcoming election. In fact, in controlling the PF through the state-supported Robert Chabinga, one of Hichilema’s objectives was to prevent the more than 50 PF members of parliament from defending their seats on the opposition party’s ticket. Their seats are mostly held in the Eastern Province and the Bemba-speaking provinces of Muchinga, Luapula, and Northern – constituencies where the UPND has fared poorly in previous general elections. A significant number of these MPS have already made it easier for Hichilema by defecting to the UPND, on whose ticket they are likely to seek adoption to return to parliament.

Those who resist defection will be confronted with a new hurdle. Recently, the ECZ introduced a new administrative requirement that any aspiring parliamentary candidate sponsored by a political party must produce an adoption certificate signed “by the secretary-general or president as reflected at the office of Registrar of Societies”, an office controlled by the executive. The Hichilema-controlled Chabinga, who is recognised by the Registrar of Societies as the PF’s leader, is unlikely to issue a certificate of adoption to a PF prospective parliamentary candidate who does not accept his leadership. As a result, most of the incumbent PF MPs will have to find alternative platforms on which to defend their seats.

Already, Hichilema has instigated factions in at least four other opposition parties – with at least one faction supported by the State – for the purpose of making it harder for any of them to field candidates at both presidential and parliamentary level. The affected parties are the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, United National Independence Party, National Democratic Congress, and Forum for Democracy and Development. This scenario would increase the ruling party’s chances of winning the seats as the UPND will be competing against candidates standing either as independents or under relatively unfamiliar or unestablished parties – that is assuming Hichilema, using the Registrar of Societies and the ECZ, will allow any serious candidate or opposition party to run against him or his party.

The third implication is that Zambia may effectively emerge from the August election as a defacto one-party state. This is because the UPND is likely to retain most of the parliamentary seats it won in 2021, win the newly created additional 31 seats in its safe zones, and, through the orchestrated exclusion of the main opposition party from the ballot, secure the majority of seats that were previously held by the PF. I was an opponent of the PF’s undemocratic actions when it was in power and a regular critic of then President Edgar Lungu. But one does not have to support the PF to see that the absence of a viable opposition party will be a terrible development for Zambia’s multiparty democracy.

Over the last decade, the country has evolved into a two-party system. For instance, as things stand, out of the 156 parliamentary seats directly elected under first-past-the-post, the UPND (89) and PF (54) share 143. If one of these parties disappears or if Hichilema succeeds in his efforts to obliterate the PF, Zambia will become, except in designation, a one-party state. I do not think Hichilema will be bothered. If anything, he will be pleased with any election that will produce a UPND-controlled parliament because such an outcome would make it easier for him to make further changes to the Constitution such as abolishing the presidential vote or removing presidential term limits on his office.

The fourth implication is that the geographical spread of the 70 new constituencies vis-à-vis population density reinforces existing structural inequalities in the allocation of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to the advantage of the Zambezi region. Currently, each constituency in Zambia, regardless of population size, receives K40 million annually to support community-level development. This dynamic is most unacceptable when one considers the population dynamics and the fact that most rural constituencies are sparely populated.

According to the 2022 census report, Luapula Province has a population of 1.5 million people but only 20 constituencies. Western Province has 1.3 million people but 26 constituencies. This means the province with fewer people will receive at least K240 million more money than the one with more people every year. Similarly, Lusaka Province has 3 million people, but 18 constituencies. Southern Province has 2.3 million people and 29 constituencies. This means the province with fewer people will receive nearly half a billion Kwacha more money than the one with more people every year. Overall, the Zambezi region will receive at least K600 million Kwacha more than the Luangwa-Chambeshi region in CDF allocations alone every year. This is rigged development.

I have seen a few people claiming that the distribution of the 70 new constituencies created by ECZ is fair and balanced, considering the size and geographical spread of the redrawn electoral districts. This is an ill-informed position that could be a result of an uncritical reading of the law governing delimitation or an induced desire to be seen as “objective” by hunting for things over which to praise the government, no matter how misplaced.

According to Article 59 of the Constitution, size and geographical spread of constituencies are unimportant factors to consider when delimitating the boundaries constituencies. What must be taken into account are the following considerations: the history, diversity and cohesiveness of the constituency; population density, trends and projections; ensuring that the number of inhabitants in each constituency is reasonable, taking into account the means of communication and geographical features; ensuring that constituencies are wholly within districts; and seeking to achieve an approximate equality of constituency population, subject to the need to ensure adequate representation for urban and sparsely populated areas.

Had delimitation been done transparently and impartially, most of the new constituencies should have gone to Lusaka (3 million people), Copperbelt (2.7m), and Eastern (2.4) provinces. These provinces would also have the highest number of constituencies overall since they each have more people than the remaining seven provinces. Unfortunately, partisan political considerations appear to have been behind the latest exercise.

Altogether, the creation of the 70 new constituencies should not be seen in isolation but as part of a multi-pronged strategy by the executive to rig the election the legal way and install a constitutional dictatorship. This strategy consists of at least four key steps designed to undermine democratic accountability.

The first is undermining the sources of horizontal accountability. This has found expression through installation of a legislative leadership that is subservient to the presidency, offering incentives to opposition and independent MPs that has reduced parliament to effectively operating as an extension of the executive, the dismissal of judges who were seen as a threat to the interests of the ruling core, and the staffing of the superior courts with loyalists who defer to executive political interests.

The second step is dismantling social accountability. This has found expression through the co-optation into government bodies of most of the critical voices from civil society that challenged Lungu’s authoritarian tendencies, the arrest, harassment, and vilification of the remaining voices for criticising antithetical government actions, and the application of new and existing anti-democratic legislation to cultivate a climate of fear that has left many citizens unable to express themselves freely.

The third step involves crippling the political opposition. The executive has repeatedly used the police to prevent opposition parties from holding public rallies and to arrest their leaders on a variety of political offences. State institutions and actors were also employed to facilitate the death of former president Lungu, who in the absence of a viable opposition, had emerged to become the opposition, by blocking him from seeking medical treatment on time.

The fourth step involves assaulting vertical forms of accountability with the goal of reducing the visible fairness and competitiveness of elections. This has found expression through a variety of mechanisms. These include the appointment of loyalists of the executive to the Electoral Commission of Zambia, the exclusion of rival candidates from the ballot, the redrawing of electoral districts to enable gerrymandering, and tampering with the voter’s roll to inflate the number of registered voters in the ruling party’s strongholds.

Other shenanigans are changing the mechanism by which votes are converted into seats in the legislature (For instance, proportional representation seats are to be tied to the votes received by a presidential candidate rather than having a separate ballot for each political party) and making eleventh-hour changes to the electoral law to both obstruct the opposition and secure advantage for the ruling party. For instance, before parliament currently is a widely opposed Bill that proposes horrifying amendments to the Electoral Process Act such as removing key security features from ballot papers, which would make rigging easier, and empowering the ECZ “to suspend a political party or candidate for breach of the code of conduct” even during the campaign period.

In this incremental and systematic effort to undermine accountable democratic governance, Hichilema has greatly benefited from the growing disinterest in promoting democracy among great powers such as the USA and the European Union as well as regional powers including South Africa and organisations such as the African Union. As a result, Zambia’s democracy is being hollowed out through incremental institutional capture, in which the executive has weakened oversight bodies, tilted the playing field, and entrenched its advantage over time. These dynamics do not necessarily threaten immediate collapse, but they do erode the foundations of democratic stability over time.

A more urgent and present danger is that the ongoing executive-driven dismantling of the formal guardrails and norms that have long kept executive power in check risks eroding public trust in the use of the ballot as the best mechanism of changing governments. Trust is the glue that holds democracy together. When it erodes, citizens become more likely to disengage, question electoral outcomes, and support leaders who promise to bypass or undermine democratic rules. This can fuel polarisation and increase the risk of instability.

Source: https://x.com/ssishuwa/status/2045061729466409331?s=20