🇿🇲 EDITORIAL | PF’s Bill 7 Fallout: A Party Eating Itself Before the Whistle Blows
The Patriotic Front is not facing a temporary crisis. It is experiencing structural collapse, exposed brutally by the Bill 7 vote and worsened by a reaction that reveals how little institutional control the party still possesses.
Yesterday’s announcement by Given Lubinda expelling PF MPs who voted for Bill 7 may sound decisive to an angry base, but in legal and political terms it is hollow. Lubinda does not enjoy formal recognition as party president. That recognition sits elsewhere. Expulsions issued without legal authority do not bind Parliament, do not trigger vacancies, and do not restore discipline. They merely deepen confusion. In effect, PF has declared war on itself without the means to enforce the outcome.
This is the central PF problem. Authority is fragmented. Commands are issued without consequence. Directives are ignored without cost. MPs voted against party instructions, walked out of Parliament, stopped answering calls, and returned to their constituencies knowing there would be no enforceable sanction.
The Bill 7 vote did not create this disorder. It revealed it. PF entered this week without a recognised leader, without a convention, without a settled presidential candidate, and without a binding decision-making structure. It is exiting the week with expulsions issued by a faction, counter-claims by rival camps, presidential hopefuls demanding refunds for nomination fees, and MPs openly distancing themselves from party control.
This is not opposition politics. This is organisational failure.
The internal blame game now unfolding only sharpens the damage. The Makebi Zulu camp is turning its fire on Brian Mundubile, arguing that MPs who endorsed his presidential bid were among those who voted for Bill 7. Mundubile, in turn, has been issuing statements distancing himself from the vote. None of this addresses the real issue.
PF did not lose control because of one man. It lost control because it no longer has a centre.
This vacuum is dangerous as Parliament moves toward dissolution in May 2026. Once MPs lose the immediate shelter of parliamentary tenure, survival instincts take over. Bill 7 has already expanded the political map. More constituencies mean more seats. More seats mean more incentives. MPs with no party protection, no legal leadership, and no credible electoral machine will not gamble their future on slogans. They will migrate toward power.
This is where the UPND advantage becomes visible. The ruling party is not manufacturing PF’s crisis. It is exploiting it. There is a difference. PF insiders like Davies Mwila have already said openly that after 2026 there may be no PF left, only memories of violence, cadres, and chaos. This assessment did not come from State House. It came from within.
Lubinda’s expulsions do not halt defections. They accelerate them. An MP expelled by a factional leader with no legal standing loses nothing by crossing over. In fact, the expulsion provides political cover. It allows the MP to argue victimhood while negotiating relevance elsewhere. This is how parties die, not through defeat at the ballot, but through erosion before the contest begins.
The deeper failure is strategic. PF misread Bill 7 entirely. It fought a constitutional amendment using moral outrage, spiritual rhetoric, court filings, and press statements. It never built a numbers strategy. It never secured its caucus. It never answered the development argument that delimitation protects MPs as much as it serves voters. When the vote came, MPs voted with geography, survival, and future access to power.
Parties that ignore these realities do not survive elections.
As Parliament prepares to dissolve, PF faces a brutal truth. Without a recognised leader, without a convention, without internal legitimacy, and without discipline, it is not an opposition-in-waiting. It is a holding space for political orphans. Bill 7 did not destroy PF. It exposed how far the party had already fallen.
Unless PF confronts this diagnosis honestly, not emotionally, the next months will bring more exits, louder accusations, and shrinking relevance.
By the time the 2026 campaign begins, the PF risks entering the race not as a challenger to power, but as a warning story of how not to manage opposition politics in a constitutional democracy.
© The People’s Brief | The Editor-in-Chief
The question which should be asked is why the Patriotic Front doesn’t have a Central command structure. The
Author knows the answer but he is skirting around the issue.
The first is Hakainde and his abuse of State Institutions.
It’s State Machinery using State Institutions which has prevented the Patriotic Front from having a functional Central Command structure..The Executive, National Assembly, and Judiciary have all worked in tandem to prevent a functional Patriotic Front .
The second is the lack of Principles by those entrusted with leadership especially the ones with elective offices..
Principled Members of Parliament don’t abandon the Party Structures and Authority because the Opponents want to decimate the Party..They converge around that central Authority, come what may…
They fight with all their might to Protect the Party so that it survives.
In countries with Principled politicians, those who are ready to die for a cause, Hakainde’s Hopeless Imingalato on the Patriotic Front couldn’t have succeeded. But we have People who are in politics for wrong reasons – Money. Their Ideology is money..If you pay it shows.
What kind of soldier in War would abandon his commanders and starts getting orders from the Enemy Commanders?
The expulsions of those Rebel MPs are necessary.. Its not just the Patriotic Front they have disappointed, they have angered their constituents and are now even hiding from the people.
Let Hon Brian Mundubile, Counsel Makebi Zulu, and all structures converge around the Presidency of Hon Given Lubinda.
Those expelled MPs can go wherever they want. They are not victims. They are unprincipled scoundrels who have betrayed the country at a time of critical need. They can recognize Robert Chabinga as their
President, or join the UPND.
From my observations on the Copperbelt, the PF Rebels are not wanted anywhere…Not just in PF . They are not wanted by the electorates to be anywhere near power. Hon Christopher Kangombe might have just made the biggest blunder of his political career. He is gone!
“After 2026 there may be no PF left, only memories of violence, cadres, and chaos”. Very true projection.
PF must die if this nation is to know peace and unity. It divided the nation and brought us to the verge of civil trife. We are still contending with PF’s divisive rule.
Meant civil strife.