ECZ warns of constitutional crisis in august
By Charles Musonda
ZAMBIA faces a constitutional dilemma if the Electoral Process Act (EPA) is not amended before the August 13 general elections, Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) legal officer Agrippa Musoka has warned.
Speaking during a panel discussion at a legal seminar organised by the Zambia Law Development Commission (ZLDC) in Lusaka, Musoka said there was urgent need to introduce the necessary amendments to the EPA and its attendant regulations before the August election window closed.
“How do we elect the 20 women, 15 youths and five persons living with disabilities? We need that amendment to come up so that we actualise Article 47 of the Constitution because the way it is; it is not actualised.
“So come August 2026, we will have a constitutional dilemma, and the only way to resolve that dilemma is by having legislation that will actualise that provision in the constitution,” Musoka said.
He said the urgency arose because the electoral system had undergone a fundamental change, moving beyond the traditional first-past-the-post model used to elect Members of Parliament, mayors and councillors to now incorporate a system of proportional representation in which parliamentary seats were allocated based on the votes obtained by presidential candidates.
“Due to that we don’t have any legislation that provides for that, so it is just a must that we have legislation enacted and those amendments made because currently we only have majoritarian for the president, which is 50 percent plus one, first past the post for MPs, councilors and mayors but now that has to change.
“We now have women, the youth, and people living with disabilities that will come in using the proportional representation system,”Musoka said.
He said the constitutional amendments introducing reserved seats for women and persons living with disabilities in local councils had created an immediate legislative gap.
Musoka said the constitution had established the principle of inclusion without specifying the actual numbers of seats to be allocated to each category, which could only be determined through enabling legislation.
He said a bill had already been drafted to address this gap and to provide the specific numerical provisions required to give practical effect to the constitutional changes, but that the bill needed to be passed urgently if the new electoral framework was to be operational before the August 13 elections.
Musoka warned that without the attendant amendments to the EPA and its regulations, the constitutional provisions on representation for women and persons living with disabilities would remain aspirational rather than enforceable.
He said this would leave the country in a legal grey area that could expose the electoral process to challenge after the elections.
