KEY TAKEAWAY POINTS FROM UPND’S RESPONSE TO LAZ ON CONSTITUTION AMENDMENT BILL NO. 7 OF 2025

KEY TAKEAWAY POINTS FROM UPND’S RESPONSE TO LAZ ON CONSTITUTION AMENDMENT BILL NO. 7 OF 2025

We Respect LAZ opinion on Bill 7 of 2025.

The UPND acknowledges LAZ’s contribution to Zambia’s law development discourse but disagrees with its claims regarding lack of consultation for the following reasons :

1. Bill No. 7 Originates from the constitution mandate derived from the people of Zambia under article (61) of the constitution of Zambia , and the power conferred on the legislative organ or parliament under article (62) as read together with article (79) of the constitution of Zambia, which vests the power to alter the constitution in parliament.

The challenge we have with the LAZ statement is that they have no legal basis which involves quoting the law to advance their argument for government to go by their proposal except only quoting the theories of law which cannot extinguish the provisions under article (79).

2. Gazetting is part of constitutionally approved process enshrined in article (79) of the constitution of Zambia , where the alteration of the constitution is concerned. The process announced by the Minister of Justice has a platform of stakeholders making submissions and LAZ have deliberately opted to bury their head in the sand .

3. The other thing that LAZ is failing to tell Zambians is whether there is a law that has been breached by the executive ; certainly not a single one has been broken and we challenge them to cite one ;

4. LAZ should realize that the compelling clause which required citizens to vote and approve the clauses they wanted when making the constitution was repealed in 1969 ; this  was a referendum clause .

What LAZ is relying on is a theory which is not binding as far as our laws are concerned .

What is currently binding to include citizens is the referendum for the bill of rights amendment. This referendum  applicable only to the bill of rights amendments .

This said , it meant that power to alter is conferred on the legislative organ . This is the procedure governing the process today .

Notwithstanding their argument, government has assured citizens of the stage of stakeholders submissions which submissions will be considered upon recommendation to parliament by the select committee; while we acknowledge that parliament is not bound to accept the recommendations from the committee, even the Constitution Review Commissions that Zambia has held before were not an end in themselves and they were subjected to the same process .

Lastly , currently , there is no law which compels parliament to accept recommendations from the committee.

We therefore take the submissions from LAZ as good concerns for the future to help us amend the constitution so that it aligns to support the LAZ submissions of today .

Right now , LAZ submissions are mere legal opinions. If we want to take the route being proposed by LAZ and a few stakeholders, we need to amend the constitution to include their concerns .

In the time being , no law has been breached . We urge LAZ to also educate those who can’t read on the content of the bill than wasting time making political overtones .

LAZ plays a critical role in law reform as such , as much as they disagree with the process , they have the responsibility to inform members of the public on the content of the document rather than throwing away the whole document which has progressive proposals .

©️ UPND Media Team