Five Presidential Candidates Tell Lungu To Concede

Five candidates in Zambia’s presidential elections have written to Edgar Lungu calling on the head of state to accept the results of the election and concede. 

The signatories include Harry Kalaba (Democratic Party); Nevers Mumba (MMD); Fred M’membe (Socialist Party); Chishala Kateka (New Heritage) and Sean Tembo (PeP), as well as the Bishop of Botswana Trevor Mwamba. 

In their letter the candidates say they are “shocked” by President Lungu’s claims that the election was not free and fair, particularly as they say it was Lungu’s leadership which made it “practically impossible” for the elections to meet that standard.

They complain that the government used the Public Order Act to restrict the movements of opposition parties in the lead-up to the election and abused the Covid-19 public health directives to create an “uneven playing field”.

It is therefore “inconceivable”, they say, that this same government should be seeking legal avenues to delay the announcement of election results. They call the measures an “abuse of the court process” and “tantamount to seeking to usurp the mandate of the Electoral Commission of Zambia”.

The authors therefore call on President Lungu to summit to the wishes of the people and concede defeat, allowing the succession process to start “without any further delay”.

The letter follows a release from State House yesterday, claiming that Thursday’s elections were not free and fair because of alleged violence in Southern, North Western and Western Provinces. President Lungu claims that Patriotic Front polling agents were “brutalised” and chased from polling stations, leaving the ruling party’s vote unprotected in the three provinces. He has therefore called for the entire election to be considered a “nullity”.

This statement is entirely at odds with the findings of several official observer missions, including the African Union, whose mission leader, former Sierra Leonean President Ernest Koroma, said he was “impressed” with the electoral process.

The Christian Churches Monitoring Group has also said that Thursday’s elections were mostly peaceful and that while individual acts of violence did occur on polling day, these events were isolated and affected less than 2% of polling stations. 

Furthermore, the group reports that 99% of all polling stations had party agents from both the PF and the UPND, countering Lungu’s claims that the ruling party’s agents were barred from observing the count. 

The argument comes amidst a worsening outlook for president Lungu, who looks set to lose the election by a significant degree. Official results show that UPND candidate Hakainde Hichilema is leading by a margin of 461,689 votes after just over a third of constituencies have been declared.