UNITE, PICK ONE LEADER, OASIS FORUM TELLS OPPOSITION

UNITE, PICK ONE LEADER, OASIS FORUM TELLS OPPOSITION

5th December 2025

OASIS Forum Chairperson Beauty Katebe has urged the opposition to choose a leader whom they will all support, stating that having many candidates on the ballot will split their votes.

Meanwhile, PF Avting President Given Lubinda says many stakeholders would have been satisfied with the Constitution amendment process had the correct procedure been followed.

Speaking when a consortium of opposition political parties paid a courtesy call on the Oasis Forum, Thursday, Katebe advised the opposition to weigh their leaders and pick one, adding that the UPND was taking advantage of the confusion in the opposition

“It’s good that we are here together, and also, this gives me an opportunity, without permission from my colleagues, to speak to you as our opposition leaders. We are looking at you, we are watching you, we are seeing the confusion that is there and we are worried as Zambians. That is what is going to make the ruling party have the energy and the character that they have today because they are seeing the confusion that is in the opposition. You know yourselves, you know who can lead. You weigh yourselves and say, ‘for this time around, we cannot all be presidents.’ When we weigh ourselves, we can know one or two that we can depend on to say, ‘this one can be our leader,’” Katebe advised.

“So, this is an assignment to you as well, go back and work on who should be your leader and support that one person. For as long as you all remain presidents and appear on that ballot paper, I can assure you, votes will be split, and what you want to achieve, you will not achieve. The last one is that, we wrote a letter to the members of parliament trying to appeal for them not to support Bill 7 in case it slips through our hands and goes to Parliament. Unfortunately, the day we delivered the letter, Parliament refused to receive the letter on behalf of the members of parliament. We will take this opportunity to deliver the letter through you, to the members of parliament”.

Katebe stressed that the Oasis Forum was not opposed to some of the contents in Bill 7, but the Constitution amendment process itself.

“Bill 7, for us, we are not actually dwelling so much on the clauses, we are dwelling so much on the process. The process is a nullity, which renders Bill 7 an illegality, and that is where we are basing our argument. If you tell us to go to the clauses, definitely, we will be swayed because there is the issue of inclusion, and this has been our mandate that we have been fighting for; it’s actually our advocacy point. So, if we begin to look at the clauses, we may even abandon the thing that we are doing for the Zambians, because what we are doing is to have a Constitution that is going to stand the test of time because it was created on the basis of a proper process that will inform the content,” said Katebe.

“This is not the first time we are standing with well-meaning Zambians to defend a matter that threatens the peace or constitutionalism. For example, in the last few events that we have stood with people like yourselves, I think we’ve done it very well and it has been supported, even by the UPND, which is in government today. The elephant in the room is actually threatening the independence of the arms of government. Why do I say so? The judiciary ruled against this Bill to proceed. I think we saw at some point the legislature calling on the executive to take back the Bill in Parliament, quite strange. Then, we don’t have the independence of the three arms of government, and if we don’t have that, then we don’t have anything that we are going to depend on as Zambians. If the executive is going to rule over the legislature, [and] the executive is going to rule over the judiciary, then we are as good as not living in a country worth living in”.

Meanwhile, Lubinda noted that while in opposition, the UPND was against Bill 10, but the process leading up to Bill 7 had proven that Bill 10 underwent a better consultation process.

“Had this process begun four years ago, had all the people who submitted to this process been identified, had all those people been brought together in a forum to debate their submissions, had the process been guided by an Act of Parliament, had the committee at Parliament provided not less than 45 days to the public to go and engage with parliamentarians on the process, I don’t think I would have been here. I would have been quite well satisfied that people were consulted. And yes, you as Oasis Forum and others, stood shoulder by shoulder with Hakainde Hichilema, as president of opposition UPND, opposing a product of four years of work, a product that was guided by an Act of Parliament, a product that was presented to the people through government Gazette Notice, a product that was subjected to people’s interrogation through 45 days of committee sitting at Parliament. At the end of it, we saw UPND MPs celebrating the fall of Bill 10,” he recalled.

“You stood tall over that process. The process that this Bill has undergone falls far short of all previous Constitution amendment processes, and the first ones I would expect to stand tall again are those UPND MPs who objected to the passage of Bill 10. If you were sincere then, when you stood up and said Bill 10 hadn’t been a product of consultation, I challenge their sincerity, all of them. I challenge the sincerity of the President of the Republic of Zambia, was he sincere then when he said Bill 10 did not meet the required consultation threshold? If he’s a sincere man, he and his Cabinet and all his MPs ought to stand tall again and reject Bill 7 because it is a product of a highly shambolic process”.

Lubinda further questioned how government intends to use what came out of the work of the Technical Committee.

“By the way, the Technical Committee that was set up by President Hakainde must tell us at which point are their findings going to dovetail Bill 7 because the current Bill 7 which is in Parliament was presented to Parliament even before that Committee commenced its work. No one has told us how they intend to use the product of the Technical Committee to inform Bill 7. And as for the MPs from the Patriotic Front, here is an opportunity for you to stand tall on behalf of Zambia, the current generation and generations to come,” said Lubinda.

And Citizens First Deputy Secretary General Dr Kasese Bota noted that if Bill 7 is passed into law, stakeholders have a lot of work to do to ensure that what will be done is undone at some point.

Meanwhile, Zambia We Want president Kapembwa Simbao said the UPND is lying to people by suggesting that they are pushing for Constitution amendments so that they can delimitate constituencies because MMD carried out a delimitation of constituencies and a report is available.

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