By Chamuka Shalubala,
PF vice-president Given Lubinda says the party will use all legal means at its disposal to ensure it protects its seats that have been nullified.
In an interview, Thursday, Lubinda described the ongoing nullification of seats as UPND’s fulfillment agenda to turn Zambia into a dictatorship.
“This is the fulfillment of the agenda of the UPND to turn Zambia into a party dictatorship. They know very well that with credible opposition, they cannot manage to be in governance to and beyond 2026.
So their agenda is to frustrate the opposition and to do everything they can to disturb the PF. However the country must be made aware of the fact that the PF shall not take this line down,” he said.
“We are going to protect our seats first using all legal means that are at our disposal. We shall not leave any legal recourse, we shall use whatever legal process to defend our seats for the sake of protecting Zambia’s multiparty democracy. If that fails, we shall also go out in the fields and do what we know how to do best.
There is no political party in Zambia that knows how to mobilize better than the Patriotic Front. We mobilized within 10 years and formed a government.”
Lubinda said as far as the party was concerned, no PF member of parliament was involved in any act that would attract a nullification of their seat.
“When we say we are rebranding, it means just that. We are getting rid of all the bad vices that brought us were we are so that we remain the only party of choice, so that in an event that some of these things, the nullification by the High Court is upheld by the Constitutional Court, those decisions will find that we already have our heels tied to the ground to defend and retain our seats,” he said.
“As far as we are concerned, none of our members of parliament were involved in any act that should warrant a nullification of their seats. On the balance of probability, it is actually the UPND candidates who misconducted themselves as was seen across the country where people were killed, where PF members were killed during voting. This occurred across the country.”
He further expressed surprise that some seats that had been petitioned on similar grounds received opposing judgements.
“The only surprising thing is that cases, petitions with similar grounds are receiving opposing judgements. That is quite surprising and that is the reason why we have instructed our lawyers and all our members [to review] these judgments, so that we can see what the Constitutional Court can say about it,” said Lubinda
“So we are simply exercising our right to be heard by the highest court in that Constitutional Court. In case we don’t reach justice at that level, we shall certainly appeal to the final arbiter and the final arbiter are the people of Zambia. So we shall not stop at anything to protect our seats.”